Lower Sorbian to Ukrainian: addressing a person and naming an instrument change differently
A name in direct address needs a target case decision
Stone’s comparative grammar distinguishes Lower Sorbian from Upper Sorbian in its loss of a productive vocative case. Historical remnants do not make the contemporary systems identical. A Lower Sorbian name used to call someone therefore need not display the separate address ending expected in Ukrainian.
The Peace Corps Ukrainian handbook explicitly teaches the vocative for address, contrasting Роман with Романе and Марія with Маріє. The altered ending belongs to calling the person, not to changing the name’s identity or introducing a different individual.
For an original Lower Sorbian message asking Maria to come inside, identify Maria as the addressee. Copying an unchanged target nominative merely because the source lacks a separate productive vocative would overlook the target construction. The translated message still addresses the same person after the name is inflected.
Compare that with an original source statement saying that Maria is coming inside. There the name identifies a participant being discussed, rather than the person being called. Giving every target occurrence the address form would create the opposite error. The communicative role decides which construction is involved.
The handbook notes exceptions to its simplified ending rules. A translator should therefore select the actual Ukrainian name’s appropriate form instead of deriving every vocative by replacing a final letter mechanically. Lower Sorbian’s missing productive case does not supply an alternative Ukrainian declension rule.
An instrument can lose the source preposition without losing its role
Stone also states that Sorbian instrumental forms normally occur with a preposition in the systems he describes. The source relationship is not therefore identified just by an ending standing alone. Its preposition and noun phrase work together to express the relevant connection.
The Ukrainian handbook illustrates Я пишу ручкою, writing with a pen, through a bare instrumental noun. A Lower Sorbian source expression introducing the writing instrument with a preposition need not retain a separate target word for with in this Ukrainian construction.
For an original source account of a writer using a pencil, preserving the tool’s role is the objective. A target case ending can express that role even when the source used both a preposition and inflection. Counting target prepositions is not a reliable measure of whether the instrumental meaning survives.
But a companion is not automatically an instrument. An original statement about writing with another person differs from writing with that person’s pencil. The Ukrainian construction must distinguish the fellow participant from the tool; a bare instrumental selected indiscriminately could obscure the source relationship.
These two contrasts illustrate opposite changes in visible marking. Ukrainian may require a distinct address form absent from the Lower Sorbian source, while an instrumental expression may convey its role without copying the source preposition. In both cases, identify what the noun does in the message before deciding which source form to preserve or replace.
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