Persian to Tongan: the marker on the person who went differs from the person who ate
An unmarked Persian book can still be the object
The Texas Persian object-marker lesson contrasts ketāb xaridam, I bought a book or books, with ketāb rā xaridam, I bought the book. Buying remains the event in both, and the book remains what is purchased. Rā’s absence in the first example does not turn the book into the buyer. That is a useful starting point for Tongan, where visible case marking organizes participants differently.
A purchase report therefore needs two decisions kept apart: what role the book plays and how the source identifies it. A mechanical rule that only a rā-marked Persian phrase can become a Tongan transitive object would misread the unmarked purchase example. Conversely, preserving the reference difference between an unspecified purchase and an identified book does not require preserving the Persian distribution of particles.
Tongan groups the going participant with the transitive object
Clemens and Tollan illustrate Naʻe ʻalu ʻa Sione, Sione went, beside Naʻe kai ʻe Sione ʻa e mango, Sione ate the mango. In the first, ʻa introduces the person going; in the second, ʻe introduces the eater while ʻa introduces the mango. The role of ʻa is therefore not simply Persian rā placed before a noun.
The comparison supplies a concrete translation safeguard. An ʻa-marked participant in a Tongan departure clause need not be somebody being acted upon by an unmentioned traveler. The person can perform the going event. In the eating clause, the same broad case category identifies what is eaten instead.
Likewise, the eater’s ʻe is not an instruction to invent a Persian object marker on that person. It expresses the Tongan transitive-actor construction. Translating the event requires preserving eater and food, not searching for a Persian particle whose position visually resembles each target marker.
Case marking and word order must be interpreted together
The Tongan examples put the predicate before the participants, while both Persian book-purchase examples end with the buying verb. Rebuilding their order must not turn the purchased item into the purchaser. The source book’s role follows from the buying construction even where rā is absent; a target actor assignment cannot be based solely on which source phrase displays the most visible marking.
Clemens and Tollan also describe both verb-subject-object and verb-object-subject orders in Tongan. Consequently, the first noun following the verb is not a universal actor test. The case construction remains essential when interpreting a target sentence or comparing it with the Persian account, especially when two named people can plausibly fill either role.
For this pair, identify the event’s participants before assigning Tongan marking: one person going, or an actor affecting another participant. Persian rā helps recover an object where it appears, but Tongan ʻa also marks intransitive subjects. Keeping those systems distinct allows different surface arrangements to preserve the same departure, perception or action without adding a hidden actor or swapping the people involved.
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