Lower Sorbian to Maltese: two does not require the same kind of noun form
A source dual establishes the count before a target ending is chosen
DOBES describes Lower Sorbian as retaining actively used dual number. A noun or associated agreement form can therefore distinguish a pair from a larger group. That source distinction must be understood before deciding whether the Maltese noun has a suitable dual, another counting construction, or a different number formation.
Gatt, Vella and Caruana’s Maltese annotation study illustrates biċċtejn for two pieces. It also gives żewġ basal and żewġ basliet as expressions for two onions, discussing different number categories. The examples demonstrate that preserving a count of two does not mean attaching one universal ending to every target noun.
For an original Lower Sorbian instruction to take two pieces and two onions, both groups contain two. Their target noun formations nevertheless need not look alike. Giving the onion expression the piece noun’s ending merely because both source expressions are dual would confuse semantic quantity with the target lexical paradigm.
Two owners and two owned things are different pairs
Igartua documents Lower Sorbian grod-owu as genitive dual of castles, contrasted with genitive plural grod-ow. Here the source ending does more than count: it also identifies a grammatical relationship. The pair of castles must not disappear when that relationship is reformulated in Maltese.
Imagine an original source reference to two gates belonging to two castles. There are two independent counted groups. A target noun expression for two gates cannot by itself establish that the castles also number two. Conversely, identifying the two castles does not establish how many gates are being discussed.
This makes a source dual ending particularly important inside a longer ownership phrase. Read the number of the possessor and the number of the possessed item separately. A compact target expression can be fully grammatical while still misleading if it preserves the more conspicuous pair and silently broadens the other.
A smaller object is not another number category
The same Maltese study contrasts dar, a house, with dwejra, a diminutive house form. It explicitly argues that diminutive marking must be kept distinct from number, since diminutives themselves can participate in number distinctions. Smallness does not mean singularity, nor does a plural identify the size of each object.
For a Lower Sorbian source describing two small buildings, preserve both the pair and the size description. Choosing a target diminutive without an appropriate count would retain smallness while losing exactly two. Choosing a dual or numerical expression without the size content could retain the quantity but change the buildings being described.
The source genitive dual, Maltese dual, other Maltese counting forms and Maltese diminutives therefore cannot be treated as one matching set of endings. Their actual contributions differ. Translate which objects are involved, which relationship connects them and how many occur, then select the target noun formations that express those particular meanings together.
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