274. An unemphatic personal, indefinite or demonstrative pronoun
very frequently precedes the verb of which it is the object. This is
especially true if the verb in question is an infinitive:
Mi volas lin vidi, I wish to see him.
Li povos tion fari, he will be able to do that.
Vi devus ion mangxi, you ought to eat something.
Cxu vi gxin kredis? Did you believe it?
Se li min vidus, li min savus, if he should see me, he would save me.
[Footnote: Cf. in other languages, as in German "ich moechte ihn
sehen", French "je veux le voir", Latin "se alunt, me defendi", etc.
That such pronouns "are" unemphatic can be seen from English "let
her come" (= "let'er come"), "make him stop" (= "make'im stop"),
etc., in which the unemphatic forms "er, im", replace "him, her", in
pronunciation (cf. the Greek enclitic pronouns "mou, moi, me, son,
soi, se, ou, oi, e,", the Sanskrit enclitic forms "ma, me, tva, te,
nas, vas, enam, enat, enam," also "sim", and the Avestan "i, im").
The same phenomenon is indicated in "prithee" (= "pray thee"), and in
the spellings "gimme" (= "give me"), "lemme" (= "let me"), in dialect
stories.]