Tibetan to Kashmiri: move the finite verb without moving the event’s participants
The target’s second position is a constituent position
Garfield and de Villiers describe the spoken Tibetan structure they analyze as head-final, with the verb at the end. Koul’s Kashmiri description instead identifies a verb-second pattern, with an exception for relative constructions. A Tibetan clause cannot therefore be translated into Kashmiri by replacing each word while retaining its original position.
Verb-second does not simply mean that the verb must be the second written word. Koul explains that a constituent can precede it. If a Tibetan clause opens with a multiword expression naming a time or participant, the entire expression must be understood as a unit before the target order is chosen. Splitting that unit to satisfy a word count can change the relationship between its parts.
An auxiliary and a lexical predicate need not travel together
Koul’s account of the Kashmiri present indicative places the finite auxiliary in second position and describes a main-verb form with -a:n. The Tibetan source’s final predicate material must thus be analyzed into its functions rather than moved wholesale as one block.
The source may put important information about knowledge at the end as well. In the Tibetan analysis by Garfield and de Villiers, evidential material distinguishes personal knowledge, direct evidence, and inference. Placing a Kashmiri finite auxiliary correctly does not automatically preserve those meanings. The target needs its own tense-and-agreement construction while any consequential source evidential information remains recoverable.
Past agreement can refer to the object rather than the actor
Koul distinguishes Kashmiri transitive past constructions, where the direct object controls gender and number agreement, from most intransitives, where subject agreement applies. His reading paradigm includes por and pari in different number-and-gender cells. A target past form therefore cannot be selected solely by identifying the Tibetan actor.
Jäschke’s historical Tibetan grammar describes particles such as གིས་ marking an agent or instrument. That source description can help locate participant roles in an older written text, but it is not a Kashmiri agreement table. An actor marker and a target verb’s agreement controller answer different grammatical questions. The person doing the reading is distinct from the item whose properties condition the target form.
A changed opening does not authorize a changed subject
A Tibetan passage may foreground a place, a time, or an affected item while leaving an actor understood. Jäschke specifically notes omitted third-person pronouns in the material he describes. During Kashmiri restructuring, the phrase placed before the finite verb must not automatically be treated as the actor simply because it now appears first.
This direction consequently requires preserving the event’s roles while rebuilding its order: identify the Tibetan predicate, recover any omitted participant, determine which Kashmiri element is finite, and apply the agreement appropriate to that construction. A fluent-looking verb-second sentence can otherwise report the right action with the wrong actor or the wrong affected object. Correct position alone cannot guarantee faithful reference.
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