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Is anyone able to provide me with about five sentences from any Latin classical text (one or more), excluding poetry or plays, where a NEUTER noun (any) is unambiguously employed in the accusative as a direct object? There must be no other possible interpretation.

If you would be so kind as to provide the English translation as well and the source, I would be very grateful.

This request comes in connection with a linguistics project I am working on.

Thank you very much. Harry.

EDIT: Even one such sentence would be very helpful as a start. I have not been able to find any so far.

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    Welcome to the site! Have you found any candidates yourself? We can help you verify a case.
    – Joonas Ilmavirta
    Commented Feb 27 at 16:25
  • I edited your post, but one thing I wasn't too sure on: you only want direct objects, right? I ask this because several prepositions and other adverbial uses can cause a noun to go into the accusative as well.
    – cmw
    Commented Feb 27 at 20:22
  • Thankyou for your kindness. I would appreciate having examples of direct objects in the first instance, but the other examples you mention would be most welcome as well.
    – Harry
    Commented Feb 28 at 0:12
  • Joonas, thankyou for your kind offer. No, I haven't yet found any examples. I have been looking mainly in Cicero's letters.
    – Harry
    Commented Feb 28 at 0:14

1 Answer 1

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There are several tools you could use to find this, but a free and reliable one is PHI Latin texts, which allows you to search for strings of characters within an author (or authors).

Knowing that the preposition ad takes an accusative, you could just search for all instances of ad in Cicero, which will lead you to find very early on the neuter noun vadimonium. This is an unambiguous example, then, of a neuter noun in the accusative (your earlier wording).

For neuter direct objects, you'll want to find a sentence with a transitive verb and a non-neuter nominative or, perhaps easier to do, a plural verb with a singular neuter. In that case, pick a neuter noun—any will do—and put it into PHI to search for it near "nt#", which will likely give you what you're looking for.

I chose nomen (wanted a different example from vadimonium and of course a clear and unambiguous neuter noun). Lo and behold, we have an answer:

...hos digitos meos impellere potui ut falsum perscriberent nomen?
...am I able to impel my fingers so that they write out a false name?

In this example, the ut-clause has only three words within it (aside from ut), an adjective, a neuter noun, and a plural verb. In this case, it's impossible that nomen falsum could ever be the subject of perscriberent. It's thus a clear and unambiguous example of a neuter noun accusative because it's a direct object.

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    A great answer that shows not just what the asker wanted but also how to find it. I would not have thought of that trick of searching near nt#!
    – Draconis
    Commented Feb 28 at 3:38
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    I am very grateful to you and I sincerely thank you. I am new to this discipline (and to the Latin Stack Exchange) and am unfamiliar with PHI Latin texts (I was using Perseus, but fumbling about). You have given me a head start which will help me to find exactly what I need to find. Thankyou very much! Harry.
    – Harry
    Commented Feb 28 at 7:39

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