Accusative and Infinitive (a.k.a. Indirect Discourse)
Latin uses this construction with information verbs that indicate
I. information transfer (e.g. “saying”),
II. information acquisition (e.g. “hearing”),
III. information synthesis (e.g. “thinking”).
This construction indicates a subordinate verbal idea, namely the object of that
information verb. Since the construction is subordinate, it needs to show this fact
somehow, and Latin shows this by putting the noun in the accusative and the verb in the
infinitive.
* Examples:
Direct statement:
The girl is hitting the boy.
Puella puerum pulsat.
Indirect statement: Mark sees that the girl is hitting the boy.
Marcus puellam puerum pulsare videt.
(Now we’re paying attention to Mark’s seeing something, not just to that something: Mark is now the subject and
thus the primary focus of the sentence.)
*Indirect statement processes this information through one of the information-class
verbs noted above. You use it when you want to describe not just the simple facts,
but someone’s processing (perception) of those facts.
“Marcus sees the girl” and “Marcus sees the girl hit the boy” (= “Marcus sees that the
girl is hitting the boy”) are grammatically equivalent--all you’ve done is add a verbal
component to the direct object as shown by the infinitive.
Thus “Accusative and Infinitive” (Indirect Discourse/Statement)--introduced by some
verb indicating the processing of ideas--has an entire clause for a direct object.
This clause has an infinitive in it, but English does NOT translate that Latin
infinitive with an infinitive of its own; rather English treats the accusative as the
subject of that infinitive and hooks it to the main sentence with the conjunction
‘that.’
English (NOT Latin!) makes the clause subordinate with the conjunction THAT.
Latin does not use a word for “THAT”!
AGAIN:
Mater dicit
puellam
Mother says THAT the girl
currere.
runs (is running).
English often adds the word THAT in order to make sense, but just as often
chooses to leave it out (“Mother says the girl is running”). Either way you do it,
the Latin infinitive becomes a conjugated word in the English TRANSLATION.
Remember that these are two separate languages, not codes for each other,
and so they each have their own ways of saying the same things. For this
function--reporting action that happened somewhere else (i.e. indirect
statement)--Latin uses an accusative and infinitive clause as a direct object,
whereas English uses a separate clause with its own conjugated verb.
AND AGAIN: Since English and Latin do this differently, it is a waste of your time to try
somehow to force the Latin to use a conjugated verb in the indirect speech; that’s
simply NOT how Latin does it--that’s how English does it (with the help of the
subordinating conjunction “that”). You see, the concept is subordinate no matter what
language you’re in: If you want the information to be primary, then you simply make the
direct statement.
Example of what does NOT happen:
Marcus, puella puerum pulsat, videt.
(This is not a grammatical sentence!)
If you want this to say “Marcus sees the girl hit the boy,” then you’re going to be
disappointed. Since you have two conjugated indicative verbs, all you have are two
separate, simple statements:
“The girl hits the boy.” “Marcus sees.” Even more literally it would say:
“Marcus the girl hits the boy sees.”
That (ungrammatical) Latin does not indicate that Mark sees the hitting going on,
because it does not make that hitting the object of “see” (videt).