Tibetan to Igbo: recover the actor before moving the verb and its future marker
Tibetan case information must survive an Igbo sentence order
Tibetan transitive constructions can mark an actor with an ergative particle while leaving the affected object unmarked. Igbo neutral declarative clauses use subject–verb–object order, as Georgi and Amaechi describe. Moving the source’s final predicate into a natural Igbo position is consequently only part of the task: the source case relationships must still identify who did what.
Tournadre’s Tibetan example ཚེ་རིང་གིས་རྟ་ཉོས་པ་རེད། means Tsering bought the horse. The marked participant is the buyer, not the purchase. An Igbo version must retain that allocation after reorganizing the clause. Preserving the original sequence of names and nouns while simply inserting an Igbo verb can produce an account in which the wrong participant occupies the subject position.
With three participants, the distinction becomes sharper. Nweya gives Òbí nyèrè Àdá égō nà ḿgbèdè, Obi gave Ada money in the evening. Its order places the recipient before the transferred object. A Tibetan giving sentence needs the same semantic inventory reconstructed in Igbo: giver, recipient and gift cannot be allocated merely according to which source noun happens to stand closest to the verb.
Pronouns change with their role, not with Tibetan respect alone
Georgi and Amaechi distinguish Igbo second- and third-person singular vowel forms used as subjects from consonant-vowel forms required in object environments. Their account also notes that lexical nouns do not show that same nominative–accusative alternation. A translator must therefore check whether a Tibetan participant has become an Igbo subject or object even where a proper name would look unchanged.
This is particularly relevant to Tibetan egophoric auxiliaries. Personal involvement can arise because the speaker receives something, while another person acts. An Igbo object pronoun may then represent the involved participant. Assigning that participant a subject form because the Tibetan auxiliary feels first-person would reverse the event; the auxiliary’s evidential function cannot determine Igbo pronoun case by itself.
A future auxiliary moves to a different side of the event verb
Tournadre describes Tibetan future auxiliaries that follow the verb, distinguishing assertive and intentional egophoric constructions. Nweya describes Igbo future meaning with low-toned gà before a participial verb form. Source and target therefore differ not just in the auxiliary’s shape but in its position and the construction accompanying it.
The Igbo example Obi gà è-je ọrụ̄ means Obi will go to work. Its future expression establishes a later event; it should not be treated as an exact equivalent of the Tibetan auxiliary that encodes the speaker’s own volitional plan. Preserve the intended performer separately from selecting the Igbo future construction.
Nweya also emphasizes that Igbo tone has grammatical functions, while the participial prefix interacts with the root’s vowels. A Tibetan-to-Igbo future should therefore be checked as a complete target verbal expression rather than formed by attaching a memorized ga to an unchanged dictionary verb. The source future meaning supplies the event’s timing; Igbo morphology and tone supply the grammatical target form.
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