Re: Latin Grammar Dilemma

Christian writes:

>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".
Though I now teach Latin, I'm no expert (à la "Those that can,
do...."), but it would seem to me that such an ambiguity would have
existed. And perhaps that ambiguity became distracting enough so that
the modern Romance langs adopted the "Je veux que [+ subj.]", "Quiero
que [+ subj.]" structure. I believe in the modern langs, if the
subject of both the main verb and the infinitive clause are the same,
you can get away with an infinitive (Je veux être content.), but when
the subjects are different, you have to go for a que-subj. clause (Je
veux que tu sois content.). My lang, Géarthnuns, works along these
lines, even in indirect discourse:

Sí lé bí thauth ngamath.
I-nom past-aux. future-inf.marker come say
I said I would come.

vs.

Sí lé, gü söb lí höithauth sho, ngamath.
I-nom past-aux, that he-nom future-aux come-discoursive SHO, say
I said he would come.

("sho" ends subordinate clauses)

Per Jan's possible suggestion of word order distinction, a "Vou ti
esser" vs. "Vou esserti" difference might well work, but I could
envision some places where such word orderiness might become a little
unRomancelang-like (if that's what you're shooting for).  You could
also try (also not so Romancelang-like, I'll grant you) a distinct
distinction between transitive and intransitive verbs so that, say:

Vou ti asser. would mean "I want you to eat"

while

Vou ti esser. without an additional direct object would mean "I want
to eat you", and with an additional object would mean "I want you to
eat (schmaltz, the parson's nose, z.B.).

Kou