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Article published In:
Latin influence on the syntax of the languages of Europe
Edited by Bert Cornillie and Bridget Drinka
[Belgian Journal of Linguistics 33] 2019
► pp. 108–124

AcI

Inheritance and influence on some languages of Western Europe

| Università di Milano-Bicocca
| Università di Bergamo

This paper examines the history of the Accusativus cum Infinitivo (henceforth: AcI) construction in some languages of Western Europe (the Romance and Germanic languages), and attempts to ascertain whether the AcI in the modern languages is modelled on the AcI of Latin or whether the form was simply inherited. In this paper, only those constructions which are formed with verbs of saying or thinking + infinitive are considered instances of true AcI constructions. Following Pountain (1998), we attempt to distinguish ‘hard’ vs ‘weak’, ‘total’ vs ‘partial’, ‘learnèd’ vs ‘non-learnèd’ Latinisms. In conclusion, we hypothesize that the construction is favoured by Latin models, but it is consistent with structural patterns already occurring in the languages involved.

Keywords: Accusativus cum Infinitivo, Latinism, Romance languages, Germanic languages, complement clause, perception verbs, verbs of saying and thinking
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.AcI: A brief history of the construction
  • 3.A possible Latinism?
  • 4.The Germanic languages
  • 5.The Romance languages
    • 5.1Spanish
    • 5.2French
    • 5.3Italian
  • 6.Conclusions
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 30 March 2020
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/bjl.00024.mil
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