On Greek grammar and "ACI"

[pne]

I just read a page of Greek jokes, and one of them went like this:

Αν θέλεις η γυναίκα σου να σε ακούει και να δίνει την δέουσα προσοχή σε αυτά που λες τότε ξεκίνα να παραμιλάς στον ύπνο σου.

And the beginning of that made me think: specifically, the fact that «η γυναίκα σου» was in the nominative case rather than the accusative.

It sounded correct to me, though, so I took it as one difference between modern Greek and some other languages. For example, I imagine Latin would have used a.c.i. (accusative with infinitive) here: something grammatically along the lines of “If you(nom.) want your wife(acc.) to listen(inf.) to you…”. Which is pretty much how it works in English, too, for that matter! (Compare the equivalent sentence with a pronoun: “If you want her to listen to you, …” which has “her” in the objective or “accusative” case rather than the subjective or “nominative”, and has the “to” typical of English “infinitives”. [Some grammatical terms in scare quotes since they don’t fit completely for English.])

Compare also the structure in English “If you want that your wife listens to you” and the Greek (“If you want your wife that [she] listens to you”)—English puts “your wife” after “that” but Greek puts «η γυναίκα σου» after «να». (I think another way to say it would be to put the subject after the verb: «Αν θέλεις να σε ακούει η γυναίκα σου…».) German, of course, puts the verb right at the end: „Wenn du möchtest, dass deine Frau dir zuhört, …“ = “If you want, that your wife to you listens, …”.

On the other hand, the English and German on the one hand, and the Greek on the other hand, aren't really equivalent since «να» is not a conjunction: English and German is along the lines of “If you want [that [your wife listens to you]]”/„Wenn du möchtest, [dass [deine Frau dir zuhört]]“, while Greek is more like «Αν θέλεις [η γυναίκα σου να σε ακούει]» with “subjunctive” in the second clause but no explicit conjunction. If you wanted one, it would probably be something like «Αν θέλεις [ότι [η γυναίκα σου σε ακούει]], …» which is more parallel to the English and German, but the version with «να» sounds more natural to me—just as the English aci construction sounds more natural to me than the one with the conjunction. (German also has aci constructions—for example, „Ich sah ihn[acc.] essen[inf.]“ = “I saw him[acc.] eat[inf.]”—but not with “to want” as the main verb.)

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Anyway, it was interesting to see how different languages work!

Comments

[elgrande.livejournal.com]

"“If you want that your wife listens to you”"

Can you say that in English? I only learnt the aci-like construction for "want" and once read that sometimes a "that"-clause with "should" is used.

[pne.livejournal.com]

Can you say that in English?

I'm not sure ... I think so. But as I said, it sounds clunky to me, and the aci version is definitely the normal way of expressing this.

"If you want that your wife should listen to you" sounds a bit like hick dialect to me.

... ah no, a quick google showed me what I was thinking of: constructions such as "You want I should listen to you?", which are, apparently, a calque from Yiddish. So they're common in some varieties of English, but they're marked, and not standard.

[tungol.livejournal.com]

Using a subjunctive (along with a nominative subject) instead of an infinitive in those constructions is a common Balkan feature. According to Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Balkan_sprachbund#Avoidance_of_infinitive), Greek began the tendency and other languages picked it up from Greek, but I know that which Balkan language originated this or that Balkan feature is often a tangled and complex question so I'm not sure how certain it is that Greek originated it.

[elgrande.livejournal.com]

Spanish uses subordinate clauses in the subjunctive for this, too. So does French, I think. Esperanto similarly uses subordinate clauses in the volitive/imperative.