Lower Sorbian to Swedish: reported speech changes which person owns the tickets
A new clause supplies a new local subject
Swedish language authority Isof distinguishes possession linked to the subject of the same clause from possession linked to a person elsewhere. In its reported-speech example, Mikael says that his brother has thrown away tickets. The choice between hans biljetter and sina biljetter changes whether the tickets are Mikael’s or the brother’s.
Lower Sorbian also has reflexive possession, described by Stone as normally referring to the clause’s subject. But the translator must identify the relevant clause rather than simply choose a Swedish reflexive whenever the source uses a familiar possessive. Reporting a statement introduces more than one potential subject.
For an original Lower Sorbian account meaning a woman said that her brother had taken her shoes, distinguish the woman who reports from the brother who takes. A Swedish possessive linked to the embedded subject could instead make the shoes the brother’s. The broad event remains plausible while the ownership changes.
The source can distinguish own from another person’s property
Stone contrasts Lower Sorbian reflexive ownership of shoes with a non-reflexive third-person expression that can permit more than one owner interpretation. The source reflexive is useful evidence when it clearly connects the taker to the shoes, while the non-reflexive may require surrounding context.
In an original source statement that the brother took his own shoes, the owner and taker coincide inside the reported action. If the intended owner is the reporting woman, they do not. These meanings must be resolved before the Swedish possessive is selected; the nearest named person is not a sufficient rule.
This also explains why changing reported speech into a direct quotation can require a new possessive choice. Within the quotation, the speaker’s own perspective becomes active. A mechanically unchanged third-person expression can refer differently even if the translator intends to preserve exactly the same pair of shoes.
Some target constructions allow more than the basic pattern
Isof explicitly notes special constructions in which more than one possessive option can be acceptable. Its separate discussion of a family criticizing a school’s attitude explains competing interpretations involving the grammatical subject and a conceptual subject. The basic clause-local rule is useful, but it is not a claim that every difficult sentence has only one possible form.
Stone’s comparative account likewise warns that reflexives in sentences containing more than one verbal relationship can become ambiguous. For a Lower Sorbian source with an instruction, reported attitude or embedded action, identify whose perspective supplies the owner rather than assuming that one reflexive must resolve every dependency.
An original report about a parent asking a child to collect the parent’s things differs from one asking the child to collect the child’s own things. Swedish wording should make that contrast recoverable. If a complex possessive construction leaves both readings available, identifying the owner explicitly can preserve a distinction the Lower Sorbian context already established.
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