Talk:Accusative and infinitive

Structure

I'm hoping to do some writing about indirect discourse, and I think it would be helpful to reorganize the topic a bit. The accusative and infinitive construction is not, for example, the only means of marking indirect discourse in Latin (as the article currently says). It is the only means of marking an indirect statement. But an indirect question is indicated by changing the main verb to the subjunctive mood.

I think the best article structure might be

Indirect discourse

• section on indirect discourse in Latin (subdivided into indirect statement and indirect question, the former of which links to Accusative and infinitive)
• sections on indirect discourse in other languages

Accusative and infinitive

• section on use in Latin is clearer and links to Indirect discourse article
• sections on accusative and infinitive in other languages

Schoen 06:59, 28 July 2006 (UTC)

Crossover?

Its a bit odd that English has this construction whereas the neo-latin languages (Spanish, Italian, etc) do not, even though they are more directly ralated to latin. Does anyone know why this is the case? how English came to have it? A section explaining this would be nice! --BodegasAmbite (talk) 09:33, 24 July 2008 (UTC)

I think English borrowed it from Latin, whereas Vulgar Latin (and hence French etc) borrowed the "that" construction from Germanic. (Hence Medieval Latin uses credo quod ... for "I think that ...") But that's a hunch, a strong and fairly well informed one, but not a justification for putting it in the article. You would have to do a solid trawl of books on language history to get a citable source. --Doric Loon (talk) 23:38, 24 July 2008 (UTC)

I don't think it is from Germanic - "quod" can introduce a clause in classical Latin, although it occurs very rarely. Maybe it was already a Vulgar expression back then. Also, medieval Latin can use "quia" for "that"; I don't know if that makes it more or less likely to come from Germanic. (A good place to look for this would probably be "Medieval Latin" by Rigg and Mantello.) Adam Bishop (talk) 14:03, 17 January 2009 (UTC)

If it is from another language, it is most likely to be from Greek, which uses both Acc+Inf and clauses introduced by "hoti" (= quod) for indirect speech. 81.141.7.206 (talk) 22:15, 1 July 2009 (UTC)

Acc + Inf NOT the only form of Indirect Staement in Classical Latin.

'Quod' clauses are found in Pliny and subsequent authors. Considered colloquial rather than literary, but certainly there! What is more true is that there was a gradual shift in preference from Acc + Inf to 'quod' clauses in Latin literature through the centuries thus: Cicero entirely Acc+ Inf, Augustine mostly Acc+Inf with some quod clauses, Bede about half and half, Anselm mostly quod. 81.141.7.206 (talk) 21:52, 30 June 2009 (UTC)

VERY interesting. If you have a source for that, please put it in the article. --Doric Loon (talk) 11:48, 1 July 2009 (UTC)

Examples from Greek?

Since Greek is mentioned at the beginning as well as Latin, perhaps some examples from Greek should be included.92.111.250.34 (talk) 14:15, 16 April 2015 (UTC)

Inappropriate French Examples?

Being neither a native (nor fluent) French speaker nor a linguist, I'm hesitant to make these changes myself, but I believe that a number of the French examples are inappropriate. Under the section beginning "ACI is also used...", 5 of the 6 listed examples show the direct object pronoun as the object of the infinitive, not its subject, and thus they are not examples of ACI. I believe these examples can be translated as follows:

• Peux-tu me sortir de là? = Can you get me out of here?
• Je peux te mordre. = I can bite you.
• Je vais te toucher. = I'm going to touch you.
• Je veux te toucher. = I want to touch you.
• J'aime/adore te voir. = I love/adore seeing you.

In order for the object pronouns to be the object of the main verb instead of the object of the infinitive, the object pronouns would need to precede the main verb, as in the first part of the sixth example ("Je te veux mordre" = "I want you to bite.") instead of the infinitive ("Je veux te mordre." = "I want to bite you.").

Can anyone more qualified confirm my understanding here? Jbusnengo (talk) 00:45, 23 April 2024 (UTC)

@Jbusnengo You are absolutely right, these are not ACIs. The point is that in an ACI, the accusative is the SUBJECT of the infinitive. The English "I believe him to be a fool" means "I believe that he is a fool" - the pronoun him is accusative because of the valancy of believe, but in its own clause (him - be) it is the subject. Linguists argue about how best to analyze the English construction, but in Latin, which is the model for genuine ACI constructions, that is definitely the way it works. In all the French examples, the accusative is the object of the infinitive: "Je vais te toucher" does NOT imply that "tu touches". I don't think French has ACIs at all, and I am going to delete the entire section, as it completely is unsourced. Doric Loon (talk) 07:11, 23 April 2024 (UTC)

Well, that certainly sparked more of a change than I was anticipating. While I certainly can't argue that the French and Spanish sections were properly sourced, I wasn't looking to have them removed entirely.

Regarding French, while I don't know what is considered to be a reliable source, a quick Google search for "faire causatif" will show that there's at least one ACI structure in French. See e.g. https://www.thoughtco.com/french-causative-le-causatif-1368818 for causative constructions where there is an explicit agent but no explicit receiver (to use that page's terminology).

Regarding Spanish (of which I have far less knowledge), while I don't dispute the lack of sourcing, the first two examples at least appeared to involve ACI. Both involved the person referred to by the direct object pronoun (i.e. the accusative) being the one to perform the action (i.e. the logical subject, if not the grammatical subject) represented by the infinitive. Jbusnengo (talk) 13:46, 23 April 2024 (UTC)

@Jbusnengo, you are of course right to double-check this, but I really don't think any of the examples we had for French or Spanish are ACIs. Remember, an ACI is an embedded phrase (you can think of it as a non-finite subordinate clause) containing a pronoun and an infinitive, where the pronoun is the subject of the infinitive, but is marked as an object because of the way the phrase/clause is embedded. "I want him to succeed" is an ACI because the accusative him is the person who succeeds. In many languages (like German), this would be expressed as "I want that he succeeds", with a nominitive he. But in that first Spanish example, Me obligó a mirarlo, the accusative -lo is the object of mirar-. So it is not accusative because of some special ACI rule, it is just an object quite regularly being put in an object case.

I looked at the site you linked for French causatives. Unfortunately, all the examples there have nouns, and since French nouns are not case-marked, we need an example with a pronoun to be able to see the accusative (unlike in Latin). The problem I find is that if we substitute a pronoun, it is placed earlier in the sentence: "Je fais écrire David" (I make David write), but "Je le fais écrire" (I make him write). That looks to me like the le is connected syntatically to fais, not to écrire. But I'm not a French scholar, so I wouldn't know how to judge that for sure. All I know for sure is that I would want to see some grammar book calling this an ACI before I would feel confident having it in the article. Doric Loon (talk) 14:30, 23 April 2024 (UTC)