Ad. imperative grammar.

Ad. imperative grammar.

Thorsten Renk suggested (NBA/18) that the sentence bâ kitabdahê “Don’t [you] touch me!” is an imperative statement (command) with the imperative marker , and further speculates that this marker is generally used to form Adûnaic imperatives. Tolkien did not list the imperative among the verb-moods of Adûnaic, though. If is an imperative marker, then there is no Adûnaic element in the sentence to represent “me”.

Carl Hostetter and Patrick Wynne suggested (VSH/25) that this sentence is more likely a “negative wish” and is an example of the optative mood. This sounds more plausible to me, and it is possible that Adûnaic generally uses the optative for commands; see the entry on the optative mood for further discussion.

Element In