Lower Sorbian to Latvian: obligation changes case and own still needs an owner
The person obliged to act can appear in the dative
The Latvian grammatical annotation team illustrates man jāskatās spēle for an obligation to watch a game. In this necessitative construction, the person under the obligation is dative, while the object can be nominative. Its second example, zēnam jāuzraksta mājasdarbs, describes a boy having to complete written homework. A Lower Sorbian source actor should not be reassigned to a recipient role merely because the corresponding Latvian expression is dative.
This matters when a source instruction says who must perform an action. Identify that responsible participant and the task before comparing case labels. The target’s nominative noun may name the task or affected item, not the person who must act. A mechanical rule that makes every nominative the doer would reverse the structure of the Latvian obligation. The grammatical overview explicitly identifies this construction as an exception to a usual nominative-subject pattern.
A reflexive possessive does not choose its owner from gender alone
Stone describes Lower Sorbian swoj as a reflexive possessive linked to a clause’s subject, alongside nonreflexive alternatives that can leave ownership ambiguous. Latvian has savs and its agreeing forms. Kalnača and Lokmane explain that these forms are not tied to one grammatical person: the intended owner can be a speaker, addressee or third participant, depending on the construction.
Their example Es lepojos ar savu skolu expresses the speaker’s pride in their school. They also discuss a permission-to-meet example where savs leaves the sister’s relationship unclear and recommend explicit first- or second-person possessives to resolve it. This gives a useful limit on replacing every Lower Sorbian swoj with a target form selected in isolation. When the source contains a requester and somebody granting permission, establish whose relative or possession is meant. Target agreement can identify properties of the possessed noun without independently resolving the owner.
Respectful source agreement can complicate the participant count
Stone notes that Lower Sorbian wy may address one person or two honorifically. He further distinguishes colloquial plural participles from literary practices that can use singular participles in respectful address. A plural-looking source verb group is consequently not enough to decide that several people are obliged to act or own the item mentioned.
Keep this source distinction separate from Latvian case selection. A respectful Lower Sorbian instruction to one recipient can be expressed through a Latvian obligation construction in which that person is dative; neither the source plural appearance nor the target dative creates a new group. Likewise, a source reference to two participants must retain its actual quantity even though the Latvian grammatical overview uses singular and plural as its main number categories.
For a message involving a task and a personal belonging, distinguish the person under obligation, the owner and the object of the action. They can coincide, but the source must establish that coincidence. The target’s endings should express those relationships together rather than let an isolated case or possessive form decide who is involved.
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