Lower Sorbian to Bulgarian: the noun’s ending no longer carries the same case information
Recognize the participant before rebuilding its expression
Stone’s Lower Sorbian description sets out inflected noun and pronoun paradigms, including separate nominative, accusative, genitive and dative forms. Bulgarian noun morphology does not provide a matching set: the Bulgarian Universal Dependencies documentation describes the loss of nominal case inflection apart from some vocative forms. A similar Slavic word can therefore enter a different grammatical organization in the target.
For a Lower Sorbian message about giving, receiving or discussing an item, identify the participants through the source construction before choosing the Bulgarian phrase. A source ending that helps identify a recipient is not an instruction to invent a corresponding ending on the Bulgarian noun. The semantic role must survive through the target construction instead.
Pronouns still require case distinctions
The loss of the noun-case paradigm does not mean that Bulgarian has no case distinctions anywhere. Its documentation lists nominative, accusative and dative personal-pronoun forms, illustrating тя for she, му as a short dative and го as a short accusative. These identify different relationships to the event.
Lower Sorbian also distinguishes personal-pronoun cases, so recognizing that grammatical concept is helpful. The danger is extending a rule learned for Bulgarian nouns to all pronouns. If a source personal pronoun refers to someone affected by an action, choosing a target subject form solely because nouns appear less inflected can misassign the participant. Interpret the source pronoun’s role first, then select the relevant Bulgarian series.
A short form near the verb may express ownership
The Bulgarian documentation gives two arrangements of a sentence meaning he took my hat. One places the short possessive form near the verb; the other puts it after the hat noun. Their differing positions do not change the owner from the speaker to the person taking the hat.
Stone likewise discusses Lower Sorbian reflexive and possessive reference, distinguishing an owner associated with the subject from another possible owner. For this direction, do not assume that the noun nearest a Bulgarian short form supplies its owner or antecedent automatically. Recover whose property the Lower Sorbian source identifies, then check how that dependency is expressed in the target.
This is particularly relevant when the source mentions both an actor and another person’s possession. The target can contain a short form near the action word without turning its owner into the actor. Conversely, preserving a plausible word order is insufficient if the chosen form changes who owns the item.
A Bulgarian suffix may mark reference rather than source case
The Bulgarian definiteness documentation illustrates жената, the woman, and an expanded noun phrase whose article appears on its first adjective. The article belongs to the phrase; it is not repeated on every agreeing modifier. A target ending may therefore contribute definiteness rather than reproduce a Lower Sorbian case ending.
When an extended Lower Sorbian description becomes Bulgarian, separate which person or thing is intended from the grammatical role it has in the event. Marking a known referent does not itself identify its role as giver, recipient or object. Likewise, carrying over every source modifier ending as though the target required parallel marking can misbuild the phrase. Read case, ownership and definiteness as distinct dependencies whose visible expression differs between these two languages.
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