Tibetan to Central Kurdish: reverse the ownership sequence without reversing the owner
A Tibetan genitive precedes what it determines
Jäschke’s historical Tibetan grammar places a genitive expression before its governing noun. The owner-to-owned sequence is part of the written construction he describes. When translating such a phrase, identifying the relationship is more useful than preserving its order mechanically.
Thackston’s Sorani reference grammar illustrates a possessive construction in which the head noun is followed by an izafa link and then its possessor. His romanized dargâká i châykhânaká means the door of the teahouse. A corresponding Tibetan phrase must consequently be rebuilt around the door as the target head, rather than leaving the teahouse in an apparent head position merely because it occurred first.
The same link also appears with a describing word
Thackston gives nâma i drezh for long letter, with a linking vowel between the noun and adjective. A target izafa therefore does not invariably identify an owner. It can connect a description. The relationship must be understood from the actual words and construction.
Jäschke describes Tibetan adjectives as commonly following their nouns but also allows a preceding adjective in a genitive construction. Thus the presence of a Tibetan genitive does not justify translating every following relationship as literal ownership. A description and a possessor can each involve linking grammar while contributing different information about the head noun.
Definiteness changes the target adjective construction
Thackston distinguishes the open adjectival link from a close construction used with demonstratives and definite nouns, where the linking vowel changes. The Tibetan input’s intended reference must therefore be established before the final Sorani noun phrase is formed. A phrase naming an already identified object need not use the same construction as a newly introduced indefinite one.
In a Tibetan account contrasting an unfamiliar letter with a previously mentioned letter, repeating an identical target noun-adjective frame can flatten that distinction. The descriptive property may stay constant while the reference changes. Conversely, a different Sorani link should not be interpreted as evidence that a different person owns the object; definiteness and possession are separate properties.
Personal knowledge is not a hidden ownership ending
Garfield and de Villiers analyze spoken Tibetan evidential expressions involving personal knowledge and involvement. These are not simply genitive markers. A speaker can know a fact personally without owning the object involved, and can refer to an owned object in a statement based on another kind of evidence.
In Tibetan-to-Sorani translation, recover the noun phrase’s head, description, and owner before interpreting any separate predicate-level knowledge distinction. Rebuilding an ownership phrase in the opposite order cannot by itself preserve the source’s evidential meaning. Equally, adding an explanation of how the speaker knows does not fix a reversed possessor relationship. The door must remain the door belonging to the teahouse, while the statement about that door retains whatever knowledge basis the Tibetan source actually supplies.
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