[tlhIngan Hol] Don't be alarmed, now.

[Alan Anderson]

On Sun, Oct 31, 2021 at 6:12 PM Will Martin <willmartin2 at mac.com> wrote:

> If we had a verb for “be alarmed”, you could say, {yI-[be alarmed]Qo’},
> but the verb is {ghum} — “alarm, sound an alarm”. In a Statement, we could
> build “be alarmed” out of {glumlu’}, but when you put the {yI-} on it, the
> subject is expected to be the First Person.
>

Or you could say {yay'} "be shocked, dumbfounded" or {bIt} "be nervous,
uneasy". The English "be alarmed" doesn't really have anything to do with
alarms.

{yI-} is *not* a First Person prefix, but I will assume you know it's
Second Person subject and just misspoke.


> Well, the statement “I am alarmed,” would be {vIghumlu’} or “-indefinite
> subject- alarms me."
>
> Does the imperative prefix do the same {-lu’} trick pointing to the object
> instead of the subject? Is {yIghumlu’} valid for “Be alarmed!”?
>

I'm going to have to go with an unequivocal "No".  The indefinite subject
suffix doesn't "point" the meaning of a word to anything that the word
doesn't normally point to. It *always* means the subject is indefinite.
That is completely incompatible with imperatives, which *always* have a
second-person subject.

-- ghunchu'wI'
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