Objective Infinitive vs. Complementary Infinitive

[Anonymous]

In latin:

Complementary Infinitive: A second verb is used to complete the meaning of the main verb in its infinitive form

Example:

We ought to give help to miserable people
MISERIS AUXILIUM DARE DEBEMUS

Ought=main verb Give=Infinitive Help=Object

Now look at the objective infinitive: Infinitive as object of main verb with noun in accussative form which is subject of infinitive

Example:

The farmer taught the slaves to work
AGRICOLAS SERVOS LABORARE DOCUIT

"Slaves Work" = one block or object of the main verb teach




If you look at the first sentence (complementary infinitive) the object 'help' was seperate from the rest of the verbs. It is an object of them but it is not considered one working unit. As far as i am aware in the second sentence (objective infinitive) 'slaves work' is one gigantic block or object of the main verb. This is a combination of the object + infinitive to form an object.



What is so special about the second sentence that is not in the first? Why cant 'help' in the first trigger the same relationship and be attached so that it looks like 'help give'. It cannot be because there is no person involved like 'the slaves' can it? In the first sentence we gave 'help'. there is no person. In the second line there was a slave involved. Could this be it?



thanks.

 

[Iynx]

MISERIS AUXILIUM DARE DEBEMUS

AGRICOLAS SERVOS LABORARE DOCUIT

To begin with, I think that if you mean "the farmer taught the slaves to work" the subject should be agricola, not agricolas. But that's beside the point.

I think more or less understand the matter to which you refer, but it is not easy to explain it clearly. It is worth noticing that in the first instance the agent or subject is the same for both verbs: "we". But in the second instance the farmer is the agent of the first verb, docuit, while the object of the first verb, servos is the agent of the second.

More broadly: the language is the way it is; we take certain idiomatic constructions (which when Latin was a mother-tongue were learnt naturally by toddlers) and in order to facilitate our handling of them, we label and organize them.

It is interesting that you should have used auxilium in your first example, as your sentence illustrates how an auxilary ("helping") verb may take a "complementary" infinitive. We do the same thing in English: we say "he ought to shoot" or "he ought shoot" not "he ought shoots". Dare in your example is, so to speak, verb-like.

Your second example, on the other hand, may be filed under "double accusative"-- the laborare is here noun-like, and may in fact be said to be in the accusative. There are a number of different double-accusative idioms in Latin. In this very common one, one of the accusatives is sometimes called the Accusative of the Person and the other the Accusative of the Thing. What does the farmer teach? Working. Whom does the farmer teach? The slaves. Again as in English:
"Teach a man to fish...".

I am going to conclude by admitting that there are some Latin idioms that seem to fall between these two forms. One can for example render "I wish to speak" either as volo dicere or volo me dicere, the first corresponding with your first example, and the second with your second, even though in volo me dicere the agent of the two verbs is the same.

 

[Nikolaos]

With thousands viewing our site monthly, it might be worth clarifying old answers.

The complementary infinitive completes the verb. The first one makes no sense without dare: miseris auxilium debemus is incomplete.

The objective infinitive clarifies, completes, or is the object. It can often be removed without making the sentence nonsensical, as in agricola servos docuit.

So, in simple cases, the objective infinitive may be omitted (with data loss), but the complementary infinitive cannot.

 

[Godmy]

Yeah...
or just think about it the way that "auxilium" is an object of dare, not of "debemus" ("dare" itself could be virtually thought of as about object for debemus)

"dare" is like its mother (mother of "auxilium")- you can't remove the mother and leave the child/ren behind. Not in a latin sentence (miseris is then second, now indirect object of dare.)
... That's like if you wanted yourself to exist without your mother have ever been born.

Your grandmother= debemus;
Your mother = dare
You = auxilium
Your younger brother you take care of = miseris

And it's just about this simple understanding of the dependencies, not about guessing "which type of infinitive it is".

​

(the colours don't matter here, it's been generated in a program I've made recently - I'm going to make it public soon)​

 

[Nikolaos]

Following Godmy's reasoning, you can look at it this way:

Some verbs take the nominative: sum, fio
Some verbs take the accusative: edo, facio
Some verbs take the genitive: memini, obliviscor
Some verbs take the ablative: careo, utor
Some verbs take the dative: studeo, inesse
Some verbs take the infinitive: debeo, possum
Many admit different cases for different nuances, which may be used in conjunction: do, dico
Some generally take nothing at all: vivo, sto

Exceptions exist in the above examples, which are only for illustration purposes.

 

[Imber Ranae]

I always thought this distinction was somewhat artificial in Latin. Even debeo and possum don't strictly require an infinitive, though it's true they are usually complemented by one. Debeo can just mean "owe" and take a regular noun as its direct object instead of a complementary infinitive, and possum can mean "have power/influence/efficacy" with an adverb like plus or plurimum (usually combined with a prepositional phrase like ad "for" or apud "among") and no infinitive.

Really only the verbs queo and nequeo absolutely require an infinitive to complete their sense, afaik.

 

[/Yks/]

View attachment 632

With thousands viewing our site monthly, it might be worth clarifying old answers.

The complementary infinitive completes the verb. The first one makes no sense without dare: miseris auxilium debemus is incomplete.

The objective infinitive clarifies, completes, or is the object. It can often be removed without making the sentence nonsensical, as in agricola servos docuit.

So, in simple cases, the objective infinitive may be omitted (with data loss), but the complementary infinitive cannot.

Ignōsce, Nīcolāe! Īn sententiā ā mē sublitā errās - ut monuit ImberRānae, "dēbēre" can mean "to ow". Which results in your shortened example "miseris auxilium debemus" simple and clear meaning "We owe help to the miserable" - quam ista abhorreō nimium "grammatizandī" exempla!
"Pauca, inquit Erasmus Roterodamus, praecepta volo sed optima!" Haec vestra... This somehow makes me sad, ever and ever again. I just had forgotten that it's that hard there outside of "Latinia" - here is o n e example of today's vivid Latin, a film about the one-language-method course "Lingua Latina per se illustrata". I wish you from my heart good luck! May you once find the entrance into that beautiful land of a language !

 

[/Yks/]

(...)
More broadly: the language is the way it is; we take certain idiomatic constructions (which when Latin was a mother-tongue were learnt naturally by toddlers) and in order to facilitate our handling of them, we label and organize them.
(...)
I am going to conclude by admitting that there are some Latin idioms that seem to fall between these two forms. One can for example render "I wish to speak" either as volo dicere or volo me dicere, the first corresponding with your first example, and the second with your second, even though in volo me dicere the agent of the two verbs is the same.

Dear lynx, I'd wish to make two commentaries on what you have said:

First(a bit "off-topic"), it looks like that we learn languages used by our parents, sisters, brothers even when we are in our mothers belly - as far as I know, there have been studies showing that unborn "get stunned" when they perceive a grammatical mistake (= an anomaly in the language pattern they have simple aborbed by listening to their surrounding). To come back to Latin, I confess I don't espouse the distinction "Natural Latin" in Roman times vs. "Unnatural Latin" today - I would prefer the distinction Native Language vs. Secondary Language.

In second, after long years of active use and reading, I f e e l a clear difference between "dicere volo" and "me dicere volo": the latter seems to express I kind of "self distance" - I guess becouse this construction is far more often used to express what we expect from others rather than "what w e want to do": "Marcum mihi adesse volo" ~ "I expect, that Markus (will) help me" --- "me dicere volo" ~ "I expect from myself..." : it sounds like a self reflection, like making a distinction between "me that wants" and "me that does" or "ought do".
Somewhat odd. I hope that helps you a bit in understanding the differences between thees infinitive constructions...