Lower Sorbian to Albanian: father can be the owner without being the adjective’s head
An adjectival source form can identify a person who owns something
Stone describes a Lower Sorbian preference for possessive adjectives and gives nanowy dom, father’s house, alongside a genitive alternative. The adjective-like form identifies the owner. It should not automatically be interpreted as saying that the building has a fatherly quality or resembles a father.
The Albanian Universal Dependencies overview describes a possessive construction with a connective between the owned item and its possessor. Its example shkronjat e librit, the letters of the book, uses a connective agreeing with the feminine plural owned noun, not the masculine singular possessor.
For an original Lower Sorbian reference to father’s letters, identify father as the owner and letters as the owned items. In the corresponding Albanian construction, a feminine plural linking form would not imply a female owner or several fathers. Its agreement belongs to the other side of the ownership relationship.
A modifier inside the owner expression has a separate connection
Stone’s discussion also describes a source expression meaning our father’s house, with a modifier associated with the father who underlies the possessive adjective. That creates nested relationships: the house belongs to the father, while the personal possessive identifies whose father is intended.
A target version must retain that nesting. For an original source reference to our father’s house, attaching our only to house could instead describe a house shared by the speakers without identifying which father is meant. The intended family relationship does not follow merely from retaining the nouns father and house.
The Albanian linker’s agreement with the owned noun supplies one grammatical connection; it is not a general instruction that every modifier nearby must refer to that noun. Interpret the complete owner phrase before choosing the target sequence. Inner family reference and outer property ownership need to remain distinguishable.
Definite marking and ownership do different work
The Albanian overview separately describes noun definiteness as suffixal and identifies connective forms used in possessive constructions. An expression can therefore contain meaningful grammatical material associated with identification and with the ownership link. Similar article-like appearances do not make those elements redundant.
Pankau’s colloquial Lower Sorbian analysis includes a definite article occurring with a possessive expression. That source combination supports reading identifiability and possession separately, rather than deleting one automatically. His observation concerns the colloquial variety, while Stone’s possessive-adjective description addresses the broader grammatical comparison.
For an original source contrast between the father’s known house and another building belonging to him, preserve which item is already identifiable and which is newly introduced. The owner can remain the same while the discourse status changes. Albanian noun forms and connecting material should express that difference within their own construction; they need not imitate the source’s adjective ending or its position to preserve the family and property relationships.
Language references