Predicate Complements of Link Infinitives

John 1:12, ὅσοι δὲ ἔλαβον αὐτόν, ἔδωκεν αὐτοῖς ἐξουσίαν τέκνα Θεοῦ γενέσθαι, τοῖς πιστεύουσιν εἰς τὸ ὄνομα αὐτοῦ. But as many as accepted him, he gave them power to become the children of God, to those who believed in his name.

Why is τέκνα determined syntactically to be accusative rather than nominative? This inflection, like all Indo-European neuters, uses the same morphological ending for accusative and nominative.

The distribution statics cited here are from the GNT Grammatical Commentary (GNTGC) database, which has a quarter of the GNT syntactically coded, and is the source of the grammar rules and example verses.

γενέσθαι and εἶναι are link (copulative) verbs that take predicate complements instead of objects like transitive verbs. Predicate complements of finite verbs are predicate nominatives, but link participles take any case, and predicate complements of link infinitives are usually accusative but occasionally nominative. So predicate complement is the natural generalization of predicate nominative, which may be substantival or adjectival.

τέκνα is a predicate complement of γενέσθαι, an epexegetical appositive of accusative ἐξουσίαν, the direct object of ἔδωκεν. Although the case of the infinitive γενέσθαι is accusative, that fact does not always determine the case of its predicate complement τέκνα. 

In John 5:6, Θέλεις ὑγιὴς γενέσθαι do you want to get well, the infinitive γενέσθαι is an accusative object of θέλεις but its predicate complement ὑγιὴς is nominative. Nominative infinitives often take accusative complements. There are 81 predicate complements in the GNTGC sample; 69 are accusative, and 11 are nominative; one is a predicate genitive.

Twenty-three of the 80 accusative-nominative predicate complements are nouns; 47 are adjectives; the rest are participles, pronouns and the uninflected adverb πλησίον neighbor. Although τέκνα is a noun, the sample size, and thus the validity of the conclusions, is increased by including the other classes in the tests that validate the empirical case-determination rules.

The 80 predicate complements are divided into three groups: (1) 51 that have an explicit infinitival subject and follow its case, (2) 11 predicate nominatives that have no explicit infinitival subject and whose infinitive and its control verb are aligned (have the same subject), and (3) 18 predicate accusative complements that have no explicit infinitival subject and whose infinitive and its control verb are unaligned (have different subjects). The three groups indicate the syntactical determinants/rules of the case of the predicate complement of the link infinitives.

The separation into those that do and those that do not have explicit infinitival subjects is important because infinitives with explicit subjects do not follow the alignment rule for the case of the predicate complement. The subject of the infinitive is different from the subject of the control verb of the infinitive. In Acts 17:20, βουλόμεθα οὖν γνῶναι τίνα θέλει ταῦτα εἶναι so we want to know what these things mean, ταῦτα is the nominative subject of the finite control verb θέλει directly and of the infinitive elliptically. 

The cases of the two aligned subjects are not always the same. In 1 Thessalonians 1: 6–7, καὶ ὑμεῖς μιμηταὶ ἡμῶν ἐγενήθητε καὶ τοῦ Κυρίου, δεξάμενοι τὸν λόγον ἐν θλίψει πολλῇ μετὰ χαρᾶς Πνεύματος Ἁγίου, ὥστε γενέσθαι ὑμᾶς τύπον πᾶσιν τοῖς πιστεύουσιν ἐν τῇ Μακεδονίᾳ καὶ ἐν τῇ Ἀχαΐᾳ and you became imitators of the Lord too … so that you became an example for all the believers, the finite control verb subject ὑμεῖς is nominative but the aligned link infinitive subject ὑμᾶς is accusative. The accusative predicate complement of γενέσθαι, τύπον, matches the infinitive subject case, not the finite verb subject case.

Our sample has 23 subjects of link infinitives, and all but Romans 9:3 are accusative. Subjects of infinitives, like predicate complements, are usually accusative but may be nominative, but the rules determining their cases are not always the same.

Romans 9:3, ηὐχόμην γὰρ ἀνάθεμα εἶναι αὐτὸς ἐγὼ ἀπὸ τοῦ Χριστοῦ ὑπὲρ τῶν ἀδελφῶν μου τῶν συγγενῶν μου κατὰ σάρκα, for I could wish myself to be cursed from Christ for the sake of my brothers by race in the flesh. In this one-of-a-kind construction, αὐτὸς ἐγὼ is apparently the nominative subject of both the link infinitive εἶναι and its control verb ηὐχόμην, but is felt to be directly the subject of the infinitive because of the myself idea. 

We could just consider ἐγὼ the subject of ηὐχόμην instead of εἶναι, and then all subjects of infinitives would be accusative. However we may not dismiss the possibility of nominative subjects since we see nominative predicate complements. In keeping with the rule that the predicate complement case matches the subject case, we take ἀνάθεμα as nominative syntactically.

All link infinitives whose heads are not a finite verb take accusative subjects. All link infinitives whose finite control verbs have an explicit subject take accusative subjects. All unaligned link infinitives whose finite control verbs have no explicit subjects take accusative. Only aligned link infinitives with finite control verbs with no explicit subjects may take a nominative or accusative infinitive subject. 

The two examples of accusative subjects are instructive. Romans 2:19, πέποιθάς τε σεαυτὸν ὁδηγὸν εἶναι τυφλῶν, φῶς τῶν ἐν σκότει if you are confident that you are a guide to the blind, a light to those in darkness. The verbs πέποιθάς and εἶναι are aligned, but here Paul uses an accusative subject σεαυτὸν of the link infinitive instead of a nominative as in Romans 9:3 (and the predicate complement ὁδηγὸν follows case).

2 Corinthians 7:11, ἐν παντὶ συνεστήσατε ἑαυτοὺς ἁγνοὺς εἶναι τῷ πράγματι in everything you have shown yourselves to be pure in this matter.  Here the aligned subject σεαυτὸν is accusative. We see by this that Paul could have written accusative ἐμαυτὸν instead of nominative αὐτὸς ἐγὼ in Romans 9:3 just as the translators do in English. The rules governing the case of the subject are being developed, because the explicit subject determines the case of the predicate complement generally, although τέκνα does not have an explicit subject in the sentence.

The three rules for determining the accusative-nominative case of the predicate complement of the link infinitive, and specifically John 1:12, achieve a reasonable degree of confidence with a sample size of 80. The 23 sample size for the case of the subject is smaller. 

The 11 predicate nominatives of the link verbs in the sample are in the following verses: Luke 10:36, 22:24; John 5:6; Acts 17:18, 20; Rom. 1:22, 9:3; Gal. 2:9; 2 Cor. 5:9; Phil. 4:11; Heb. 11:4; Jas. 1:26.

Can predicate complements of non-aligned verbs be nominative? No, there are no such precedents in our sample. If the subject of the accusative link infinitive and its matrix verb are different, then the predicate complement is accusative. That is why we may be fairly confident that τέκνα is accusative. 

Other examples of accusative predicate complement nouns are in Matt. 16:13–14; Mark 1:7, καὶ ποιήσω ὑμᾶς γενέσθαι ἁλεεῖς ἀνθρώπων and I will make you become fishers of men; Luke 20:6, 23:24; Acts 27:4; Rom. 3:9, 4:11–12, 16; 1 Cor, 7:7; Phil. 3:8; Jas. 1:18; 1 Pet. 5:12.

These grammatical rules are detailed, and the writers of the GNT did not express them in grammatical terms, but they knew them anyway, as shown by use patterns, and we can express them accurately.

—Dennis Kenaga, March 2018