Lower Sorbian to Manipuri: reconstruct the noun phrase before attaching its case marker
Words separated in the source can still belong together
Pankau describes colloquial Lower Sorbian constructions in which an interrogative modifier is separated from its noun. A question about shoes can place the preposition and question word before the subject while the noun appears later. The dependency survives that separation; it does not create a second, unrelated question.
Singh’s Manipuri morphology study describes case markers with a clitic-like ability to attach at the edge of a phrase. This makes the phrase boundary important in the target. A translator cannot decide where the target marker belongs merely by attaching it to the word that stood closest to the source preposition.
For an original source question asking which shoes someone walks in, recover the complete expression identifying the shoes. Then choose the corresponding Manipuri relationship construction. Treating the separated interrogative as a standalone object while leaving the noun outside its phrase would disconnect what is being asked from the item being discussed.
One source ending may require several target distinctions
Lower Sorbian also retains active dual number, as the DOBES description notes. Its distinction between a pair and a larger group can be conveyed through inflection. That precise count must survive even when the Manipuri noun phrase organizes its information through a different sequence of grammatical elements.
Singh analyses Manipuri noun morphology into components including a pronominal element, root, gender-related material, number, quantifier and case. His examples mə-ca-nu-pi-siŋ-nə and mə-ca-nu-pa-siŋ-nə mean by his or her daughters and by his or her sons. The gender distinction concerns the children, not the owner.
For an original Lower Sorbian statement about an action performed by two daughters, preserve the participants as female children and preserve exactly two. A general plural expression would not independently recover the pair. Adding male-owner meaning because the source possessive belongs to a particular agreement pattern would introduce a separate error.
Read the complete target form rather than guessing from its length
The two Manipuri examples also distinguish possession from the relationship translated by by. A compact word may therefore contain both whose children are meant and what role those children have in the event. The Lower Sorbian equivalent need not package those meanings into precisely the same number of written words.
Imagine a source account contrasting something made by the two children with something made for them. The same participants can appear in both statements, but their event roles differ. Retaining an appropriate child expression while replacing the relationship incorrectly would produce an apparently plausible account with a different meaning.
The paper’s examples are presented in a research transliteration alongside Bengali-script material. That presentation supports the morphological distinctions discussed here; it does not establish that every contemporary Manipuri text must use that script. For this direction, interpreting the Lower Sorbian phrase dependency and count comes before choosing the target morphology and its appropriate written representation.
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