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L22 comment on reflexives



From Lesson 22:

   Bunkopambava bavi xevi.
   I made you afraid of me.

Note in the second example that, even though the verb is reflexive, the use of "myself" instead of "me" would sound unnatural. [Or is this simply a quirk of my own dialect of English? Comments welcome.] This applies only to first and second person forms. Third person forms must use "-self" ("herself", "themselves", etc) because of the chance of ambiguity, as in "John told me that Alex made you afraid of him" (which is always ambiguous in English but never in Latejami). If we use "himself" instead of "him" in the English translation, there is no ambiguity.

The translation as given sounds right to me too.  I think it would be wrong to use "myself" in that sentence, but I'm not sure why.  Note the following variant, though.

You made me afraid of myself.

Here "myself" is right and "me" wrong.

Or:

I made you afraid of yourself.

If the person who is afraid is the same as the object of the fear, then the reflexive pronoun is correct.  Who makes that person afraid (the subject) is irrelevant.

stevo