Re: Latin Grammar Dilemma

 --- Christian Thalmann <cinga@...> wrote: > I was
considering to keep Classical Latin's neat
> "accusativus cum
> infinitivo" construction alive in Jovian, e.g.
>
>      Vou ti ere condinda.
>      [vow ti e:r kAn"dind@]
>      I_want  thee  be  happy.
>      "I want you to be happy."
>
> However, there seems to be a potential for
> misunderstandings if the
> infinitive is a transitive verb, e.g.
>
>      Vou ti esser.
>      [vow ti "ess@r]
>      I_want  thee  eat.
>
> Should that be parsed as "I want you to eat" or "I
> want to eat
> you"?
>
> Does Latin have this ambiguity too?  If so, I might
> just let the
> AcI die out and continue using the preposition |ud|
> like English
> "that" or German "dass".
well, looking at this, i felt a bit uneasy and had to
go and look it up. there's some ( helpfully
uncatalogued ) latin syntax at
http://community.middlebury.edu/~harris/AG_2.html from
which i gathered the following :

accusative and infinitive is generally used for
indirect speech

an infinitive after a verb of wishing &c generally has
no subject ( it is understood to be the same as the
subject of the verb of wishing )

if you want another subject, you use |ut| ( which is
rather like your |ud| :

|uoló té ésse| 'i want to eat you'
|uoló ut [tú] édás| 'i want you to eat'

apperently some clauses usually expressed with |ut| +
subj can in poetry take an infinitive, but the
examples they give are verbs like 'urge' which would
rule out having the same subject for both. furthermore
the subject of the infinitive doesn't seem to be
expressed

hope a) that's helpful and b) that's right !

bn

=====
bnathyuw | landan | arR
stamp the sunshine out | angelfish
your tears came like anaesthesia | phèdre

__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Everything you'll ever need on one web page
from News and Sport to Email and Music Charts
http://uk.my.yahoo.com