Latin Stuff (OT and was Re: Replacing character

Since you took the time to reply, I dug a bit more and found that "me" can 
be translated as "myself". I had forgotten that and so threw myself off 
(been too long, sad to say). So a strict translation of "Scio me nihil 
scire" would be "I know myself to know nothing." That makes sense, and a 
not-so-strict translator might render it as "I know that I know nothing" 
to more readily capture its meaning for English speakers.

Given that Latin is an SOV language, isn't "nihil" the object of "scire" 
rather than the subject of the embedded sentence?

I suppose we had better take any further conversation on this topic 
off-list. My apologies to the list master and my fellow readers for 
wandering so far into the weeds. I studied transformational and cognitive 
grammar long ago and, being mired in the practicalities of getting 
software to work, rarely get to have any such discussion these days. 
Consequently, I failed to resist the urge to reply.

Jay Bryant
Bryant Communication Services
(presently consulting at Synergistic Solution Technologies)




"Joris Gillis" <roac@xxxxxxxxxx> 
02/14/2005 02:02 PM
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Re:  Replacing character entities






Tempore 20:52:00, die 02/14/2005 AD, hinc in 
xsl-list@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx scripsit <JBryant@xxxxxxxxx>:

> My thought as well, as I would certainly not translate "Scio me nihil
> scire" as "I know that I know nothing".
 From an aesthetic point of view, that translation stinks of course; 
that's 
why I leave it in Latin on my signature:)

> I have not used my Latin in 20
> years, but I do recall that "scire" is the infinitive and should be
> translated as "to know" (which makes me think a verb is missing and 
makes
> me think it's a fragment of a longer quotation or a badly formed 
> rewrite).
AFAIK, it is a perfect Latin phrase:

"Scio"
   \ conjugated verb (+ subject)
    \   object: completive phrase
     -- "me"
        subject of infinitive sentence
            "nihil"
            predicate
                   "scire"
                   infinitive

This should be correct (I'm in the 6th Latin-math Class); English 
translation of the sentence functions could be wrong though, I know them 
only in Dutch.
 

regards,
-- 
Joris Gillis (http://www.ticalc.org/cgi-bin/acct-view.cgi?userid=38041)
"Scio me nihil scire"  - Socrates