Lower Sorbian to Bhojpuri: se does not always describe an action done to oneself
Read the verb together with its reflexive form
Stone distinguishes Lower Sorbian verbs made reflexive from verbs that simply require reflexive form as part of their lexical construction. His examples contrast myś, wash, with myś se, wash oneself, while also listing bojaś se for fear and zdaś se for seem. A source se therefore cannot always be translated by inserting a Bhojpuri word meaning self.
This matters in a Lower Sorbian account of someone being afraid. Adding a target self expression as though the person feared themself would create a different proposition. The source combination must be interpreted as a verb construction before its pieces are distributed across the Bhojpuri target.
An actual self-directed action needs its reference preserved
Lohar’s Bhojpuri grammar illustrates reflexive expressions using ʌpne and kʰud. In its father-cut-himself example, the affected participant refers back to the father. That is the kind of relationship that must survive when Lower Sorbian genuinely describes an action directed towards its actor.
The target does not have to reproduce se as a short word in the same clause position. The Bhojpuri examples combine their reflexive expressions with different case-related markers according to the construction. Recover whether the source describes acting upon oneself, doing something for oneself or another relationship involving the actor, rather than treating every occurrence as an identical direct object.
Lohar illustrates sending oneself a gift separately from acting on oneself in a cutting example. For this direction, the gift remains a distinct transferred object even though sender and recipient coincide. A target that makes the gift itself the reflexive participant would misrepresent the event’s roles.
Several actors acting on themselves differs from acting on one another
Stone describes reciprocal readings of reflexive constructions and gives Lower Sorbian mjazy sobu and jaden drugi as ways to make mutual reference explicit. Thus plural participants do not automatically establish whether each acts on themself or acts towards another member of the group. The surrounding construction can resolve that difference.
The Bhojpuri grammar separately illustrates ek-dosʌr for one another. This supplies an important comparison when the Lower Sorbian source explicitly names mutual action. A message about two people helping one another must retain the cross-participant relationship, rather than become a message about both acting independently for their own benefit.
Conversely, do not force a reciprocal expression simply because a Lower Sorbian subject is dual. A pair can perform two self-directed actions without interacting. The source number identifies participants, while reflexive versus reciprocal interpretation describes the relationships among them. Those facts must be read separately.
A subject-linked owner is another dependency
Stone also describes a reflexive possessive in Lower Sorbian. It can identify an item as belonging to the clause’s subject. A source phrase meaning the actor’s own shoes therefore concerns ownership, not necessarily an action performed on the actor’s body.
Before selecting a Bhojpuri self or reciprocal expression, determine whether the Lower Sorbian marker belongs to the verb’s lexical construction, identifies a participant affected by the action, or identifies an owner inside a noun phrase. These are demonstrably different source patterns. The Bhojpuri evidence here follows Lohar’s principally Bara-Parsa-centered description; it does not establish one unvarying form for every regional variety.
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