This construction is also parenthetic to the rest of its own sentence, but it has no implication of the existence of some implied verb like videre (e.g., Ecce ego, “Here I am”).Įnglish speakers who are learning Latin very often make the mistake of writing sentences like “Cornelia est puellam,” instead of the correct Cornelia est puella (“Cornelia is a girl”), partly because of the “object me as subject” construction of colloquial English, and partly because these students are used to seeing the accusative forms of words together with transitive verbs (e.g., Corneliam amo, “I love Cornelia” eum video, “I see him”). The nominative case can also follow the ecce. Someone might suppose that this “ ecce + ” construction is Latin’s own version of the “object me as subject” construction in English, but the truth is that the Latin construction is parenthetic to the rest of its own sentence, and the accusative case is due to its being the object of some form of an implied transitive verb like videre, so: Ecce me = Ecce vide me Eccos exeunt = Eccos vide, exeunt). There are instances in Latin literature, mostly in the plays of Plautus and Terence, where a pronoun in the accusative case follows, or merges with, the interjection ecce even when that pronoun is referring to an individual who serves as the subject of the sentence (e.g., Ecce me, “Here I am” Eccos exeunt, “Look, here they are coming out”).
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