There is such a Thing as a Subjective Infinitive, “It is pleasing to walk.”
There is such a Thing as an Objective Infinitive, “The Farmer taught the Slaves to work.”
These are Sentence Types depending on how the Verb is used. In the first one ‘Walk’ is the Subject. It is the only Thing you could be addressing. In the second one there are two Verbs and the second Verb refers to an action performed on a different Object.
In the sentence, “Videre est Credere,” there must be some contrast to draw against it and the Subjective and Objective Infinitives. If the first two are particular treatments of a Verb what is the treatment of the Verb here? In this Sentence the Word ‘Credere’ is the Predicate Nominative. What is the relation? ‘Credere’ does not sound like a Noun.
An infinitive is a noun, a verbal noun. In the example sentences, you could easily switch the infinitives for ‘normal’ nouns. If the normal noun is a subject, the infinitive in that position is a subject. If the normal noun is an object, the infinitive in that position is an object. If the normal noun is a predicate nominative, the infinitive in that position is a predicate nominative.
A walk is pleasing - It is pleasing to walk.
The farmer taught the slaves a lesson - The Farmer taught the Slaves to work.
Seeing is believing - An infinitive is a noun.
If ‘Walk’ is switched with ‘Pleasing’ and ‘Work’ is switched with ‘Lesson’
then what is the equivalent Noun to represent ‘Believing’. I was told
that it is not ‘Belief’. What is it’s Noun equivalent?
Because it is a verbal noun. I.e. it is a noun, but in some situations, it has the force of a verb: takes adverbs instead of adiectives, takes the case of its verb. See Allen and Greenough, page 286, section 451.
Anyway, in all of blutoons sentences, the infinitive is used as a noun.
In my example sentence, I switched ‘Seeing’ with ‘an infinitive’ and ‘believing’ with ‘a noun’.
Maybe the Point here is that in the Sentence, “Seeing is believing,” is that ‘believing’ stands for any Infinitive filling for any Predicate Nominative? It doesn’t have to be ‘Belief’.
blutoonwithcarrotandnail: You are definately missing some major points.
You said: “These are Sentence Types depending on how the Verb is used. In the first one ‘Walk’ is the Subject. It is the only Thing you could be addressing. In the second one there are two Verbs and the second Verb refers to an action performed on a different Object.”
Infinitives can be used as nouns, adjectives and adverbs. They can never be used as verbs. In the first sentence you wrote, “to walk” is not the subject. “It” is the subject. “To walk” is an adverb. You are right about the second sentence in the way that “to work” is the direct object.
Also, Chris Weimer said: “Just because some adjectives work like adverbs doesn’t make them so.”
How does an adjective work as an adverb?
I’ll try to clear some stuff up about the sentence “Videre est Credere.” “Videre” is a noun and it is also the subject. “Est” is obviosly the verb, and the only verb in sentence. “Credere” is noun and it functions as a predicate nominative, or a noun describing the subject.
Never heard of the internal accusative? Or how about the use of “primus” to modify the subject when, in fact, it’s talking about what the subject is first doing?
As we are all Classicists here, we are endowed with the license to pick grammatical nits. Unfortunately I think that sometimes (usually?) all we do is confuse people. Certainly that has been done with parts of speech (where of course Allen and Greenough are correct about noun uses of the infinitive).
Now to muddy the waters still further with a technical distinction:
In English, “It seems to me that seeing is believing” is an example of indirect discourse. In Latin, however, mihi videtur videre esse credere is not. videre is used “personally”; it is the subject of of videtur.
This will be seen more clearly from another example:
Anglice: “It seems to me that you are a good man” = Latine: mihi videris bonus esse vir. The construction te mihi videtur bonum esse virum is bad Latin and must be studiously avoided.
videre esse credere dicunt, on the other hand, is indirect statement. Compare te bonum esse virum dicunt.
So if you understood the foregoing, you should also understand whether videre esse credere dicitur is an example of indirect speech or not. If you don’t, well, I have made a hash of things and left you more confused than when you began. Alas. (It is not indirect speech.)
Is “el ver es creer” even Spanish, or am I merely balbutiating nonsense? That is, (1) is it even grammatically correct and (2) would any native Spanish speaker ever utter it?
