Accusative and infinitive

In grammar, accusative and infinitive is the name for a syntactic construction of Latin and Greek, also found in various forms in other languages such as English and Spanish. In this construction, the subject of a subordinate clause is put in the accusative case and the verb appears in the infinitive form. Information given in this form is considered to be in "indirect speech", also called indirect discourse.

The construction is often referred to by the Latin term "Accusativus cum infinitivo", frequently abbreviated "ACI".

In Latin

The "accusative and infinitive", more frequently known as the indirect statement in classical Latin, is the only grammatical construction by means of which one can write in indirect discourse. Indirect statements, as the name implies, report indirectly what someone has said, thought, felt, etc. Whereas a direct statement would say

:"I am a good student," says Julia.

the indirect statement might say

:Julia says that she is a good student.

Latin does not use the word "that" to introduce indirect statements. Rather, an accusative subject is used with an infinitive to develop the appropriate meaning. For example, translating the aforementioned example into Latin:

:"Iūlia dīcit sē bonam discipulam esse.":literally: 'Julia says herself to be a good student.'

"sē" here is an accusative reflexive pronoun referring back to the subject of the main verb i.e. "Iūlia"; "esse" is the infinitive "to be."

Note that the tense of the infinitive, translated into English, is relative to the tense of the main verb. Present infinitives, also called contemporaneous infinitives, occur at the time of the main verb. Perfect infinitives (prior infinitives) occur at a time before the main verb. Future infinitives (subsequent infinitives) occur at a time after the main verb. For example, the contemporaneous infinitive in this sentence,

:"Dīxērunt eum" iuvāre "eam."

would still be translated "They said he "was helping" her," even though iuvāre is classified in Latin as a present active infinitive of the .

Passive periphrastic infinitives, i.e. the gerundive + esse, indicate obligatory action in indirect statements. E.g. "Gāius dīcit litterās tibi scrībendās esse", "Gaius says that the letter ought to be written by you." [Wheelock, Frederic M. "Wheelock's Latin", HarperCollins, 2005. ISBN 0-06-078371-0]

In Medieval Latin, the ACI gradually gave way to a construction with "quod", possibly a Germanic influence on Vulgar Latin, which in turn was the origin of the construction in the modern Romance languages::"Iūlia dīcit quod bona discipula est."

In English and Spanish

In English, this construction occurs with verbs of wishing, saying and perception (e.g. "I would like the President to be successful"; "I saw her go") as well as in causative clauses (e.g. "She made me eat the vegetables"; "The teacher let him stand outside the classroom"). In Spanish it is used in causatives as well ("Me obligó a mirarlo" "He forced me to look at him") and in perception verbs ("Los vi caminar por aquí" "I saw them walk around here"), but it is not permitted in other cases.

In the framework of Transformational Grammar this construction has been considered a special type of raising.

References