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[Renderer] Implicit-subject English pronoun ('I' supplied by Pāli oblique case) — first-class marker #44

@anantham

Description

@anantham

Context

Per phase-a curation log §10.4. Surfaced 2026-05-11.

In `evaṁ me sutaṁ` ("Thus have I heard"), the English subject "I" is structurally supplied by the Pāli genitive `me` (oblique-agent convention in passive constructions). Currently the English token `ea2` is rendered with `linkedSegmentId: 'a2s1'` (the segment ID of `me`), so the reader sees "I" highlighted when hovering `me`. But there's no marker saying this English word is structurally supplied by the Pāli case, not by a Pāli pronoun.

What's missing

A reader who clicks `me` and sees the tooltip "[Genitive/Agent] by me" gets the morphological story. But the implicit pronoun supply — a critical cross-language pedagogical moment — is invisible.

Possible approaches

  1. Renderer affordance — distinguish `linkedSegmentId` (direct lexical link) from a new `suppliedByCase: segmentId` (English word supplied by Pāli case, not by a lexical match). Visually: dotted underline vs solid?
  2. Ghost token expansion — currently `isGhost: true` is for English words with no Pāli source (articles, auxiliaries). Subject pronouns ARE structurally Pāli-supplied — semantically half-ghost. `GhostKind: 'pronoun_from_verb_or_case'` exists in FEATURES.md §2.3; could mark the English "I" as a ghost with `linkedSegmentId` to the case marker.

Related

This is partly an instance of the larger `MorphHint.function/semanticRole` issue (#41 — wait, that's #41; this one would be next). They're orthogonal but related: function tracks Pāli-side syntactic role; this issue tracks English-side rendering of structural-pronoun-supply.

Acceptance

  • A design decision is captured in FEATURES.md
  • One phase-a sense renders the "I" with the appropriate cue (whichever approach wins)

Hit count

1/4 phases (phase-a explicit; the other phases don't have implicit subjects in the same way)

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