The Latin construction dicere quod revisited

From the first century BC onwards the Accusativus cum Infinitivo started to be replaced, slowly but increasingly, by an explicit subordinate clause introduced by the conjunction quod ‘because, that’ or quia ‘because, that’. Because of its semantic nature, this construction spread from the factive predicates to the assertive ones, in which the notion of speaker’s commitment certainly played a crucial role. The hypothesis, however, that this construction came into being because of the influence of Greek is only correct to a small extent.