In grammar, accusative and infinitive (also Accusativus cum infinitivo or accusative plus infinitive, frequently abbreviated ACI or A+I) is the name for a syntactic construction first described in Latin and Greek, also found in various forms in other languages such as English and Spanish. In this construction, the subject of a subordinate clause is put in the accusative or objective case and the verb appears in the infinitive form. Description This construction can be illustrated in English: I believe him to be rich. This contains a finite verb (believe) followed by a noun phrase in the accusative (him) and a non-finite verb (to be). Underlying the ACI section is the independent statement He is rich which has become an embedded clause. Thus the accusative him is both the object of believe and the implicit subject of to be. In Latin The accusative and infinitive is the usual grammatical construction by means of which Classical Latin expressed indirect statements, that is, statements which report what someone has said, thought, felt, etc. Whereas a direct statement would be "I am a good student," says Julia. the indirect statement might be Julia says that she is a good student. Classical Latin tends not to use a conjunction equivalent to the English "that" to introduce indirect statements. Rather, an accusative subject is used with an infinitive to develop the appropriate meaning. For example, translating the aforementioned example into Latin: literally: 'Julia says herself to be a good student.' here is an accusative reflexive pronoun referring back to the subject of the main verb i.e. ; is the infinitive "to be." Note that the tense of the infinitive, translated into English, is relative to the tense of the main verb. Present infinitives, also called contemporaneous infinitives, occur at the time of the main verb. Perfect infinitives (prior infinitives) occur at a time before the main verb. Future infinitives (subsequent infinitives) occur at a time after the main verb. For example, the contemporaneous infinitive in this sentence, would still be translated "They said he was helping her," even though iuvāre is a present infinitive. Passive periphrastic infinitives, i.e. the gerundive + , indicate obligatory action in indirect statements, e.g. , "Gaius says that the letters ought to be written by you." In late classical and Medieval Latin, the ACI gradually gave way to a construction with with the subjunctive. This was probably the more common usage