I’m working through the exercises and have come across question 11 of exercitium quintum. I am thinking that the intended answer would be…
Medicus ‘cultrum sumere necesse esse’ dicit.
The questions are all focussed on the use of the accusative with infinitive construction. I had thought that I understood the subject quite well but this example which had an accusative with an infinitive in the direct statement (I think) suggests to me that the indirect statement has two. I’m not convinced my suggested answer isn’t complete gibberish? Would anyone else have any pointers they feel they’d like to offer me? All help is very much appreciated.
I’m loving learning this language and have been making what feels like steady progress for a couple of years now. This forum has helped me enormously, especially when my motivation to strive for perfection in my understanding could, perhaps, do with a little support. Thank you.
The direct statement is: cultrum sūmere necesse est.
“cultrum sūmere,” an infinitive expression, is the subject of esse in a predicate adjective construction. It is nominative singular neuter.
necesse, the predicate adjective, is nominative singular neuter in agreement with the subject.
To convert the statement to indirect, we change est to esse, and we change “cultrum sūmere” to accusative. Since the infinitive expression is neuter, no change is noted going from nominative to accusative.
So in the indirect statement: cultrum sūmere necesse esse, the accusative subject of esse is the infinitive expression “cultrum sūmere.”
Note that cultrum is the accusative singular masculine direct object of sūmere; it is not an accusative subject.
The above is indeed exactly the kind of reply I was hoping for. I’m very grateful. My learning style is, usually, autodidactic and I love ‘leads’ and ‘clues’ which take me from what I might think of as confined darkness out into fresh vistas of understanding. The above answer has not only put my mind at rest regarding my immediate question but left me feeling refreshed and with my motivation replenished. Thanks.
I think there’s a simpler, less convoluted way of approaching this. We can say that necesse est is an impersonal verb which takes the infinitive, like e.g. oportet or δεῖ. Then the accompanying infinitive is simply an infinitive, and does not have to be assigned a case, variably nominative or accusative.