The Rise of the To-Infinitive

by Los, Bettelou

• ISBN13: 9780199274765
• ISBN10: 0199274762
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2005-03-24
• Publisher: Oxford University Press

Summary

This book describes the historical emergence and spread of the to-infinitive in English. The exposition is clear and does not assume an up-to-date knowledge of generative theory. The book will appeal to the wide spectrum of scholars interested in the transformation of Old to Middle English as well as to those studying the processes and causes of syntactic change more generally.

Author Biography

Bettelou Los is a Lecturer in Linguistics at the Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam. She graduated from the University of Amsterdam in 1986 and has since held teaching and research positions at the University of Amsterdam, the Vrije Universiteit, the University of Nijmegen and other colleges of higher education. She participates in the research program The Diachrony of Complex Predicates in West Germanic, and has published several papers on diachronic syntax. She contributes with Wim van der Wurff to the morphology and syntax section of The Year's Work in English Studies and with Ans van Kemenade is co-editing The Blackwell Handbook of the History of English.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements	xi
List of Abbreviations and Symbols	xiii
Part I. Introduction	1	(24)
Introduction	3	(22)
Introduction	3	(1)
The traditional view of the status of infinitives in Old English	4	(5)
The two infinitives in competition	9	(3)
Problems with Callaway's classification	12	(5)
The rise of the to-infinitive: an outline	17	(3)
Some methodological decisions	20	(5)
Part II. The to-infinitive as Goal	25	(46)
The expression of purpose in Old English	27	(18)
Introduction	27	(1)
Purpose adjuncts in Gothic and Old English	28	(3)
Bare `final' infinitives in the literature	31	(3)
Bare infinitives after verbs of motion and rest	34	(5)
Syntactic options for the analysis of the bare infinitive	39	(1)
The emergence of the to-infinitive as purpose phrase	40	(2)
Conclusions	42	(3)
The to-infinitive as GOAL-argument	45	(26)
Introduction	45	(1)
The conatives	46	(5)
The verbs of persuading and urging	51	(17)
Introduction	51	(1)
Persuading versus commanding in Old English	52	(4)
Membership and subcategorization	56	(4)
The distribution of the three frames	60	(4)
From adjunct to Goal-argument	64	(4)
Competition between the three frames	68	(2)
Conclusions	70	(1)
Part III. The to-infinitive as Theme	71	(80)
Intention	73	(28)
Introduction	73	(2)
The distribution of the to-infinitive in Old English	75	(3)
Models for the distribution of the to-infinitive	78	(10)
The dative or genitive noun phrase	78	(1)
The prepositional phrase	79	(1)
Reanalysis of adjunct to argument	80	(2)
The bare infinitive	82	(3)
The subjunctive clause	85	(3)
The ginnan-verbs	88	(10)
Conclusions	98	(3)
Commanding and permitting	101	(38)
Introduction	101	(1)
The verbs of commanding and permitting	102	(15)
Membership and subcategorization frames	102	(7)
Dual membership	109	(7)
Dative + genitive verbs	116	(1)
Reanalysis from adjunct to argument	117	(7)
The status of the AcI	124	(8)
AcIs and NP to VP-constructions	132	(5)
Conclusions	137	(2)
Commissives	139	(12)
Introduction	139	(1)
Membership and subcategorization frame	140	(3)
Three types of promises	143	(3)
Modals and subjunctives	146	(3)
Conclusions	149	(2)
Part IV. Syntactic Status	151	(80)
The category of the to-infinitive	153	(38)
Introduction	153	(2)
The Old English to-infinitive is not a prepositional phrase	155	(16)
The evidence from etymology	155	(2)
Evidence from conjoined structures	157	(4)
Evidence from nominal behaviour of Middle English infinitives	161	(1)
Infinitival to inseparable from the infinitive	162	(1)
The behaviour of the infinitival inflection	163	(1)
Evidence from internal structure	164	(3)
Positional evidence against a PP-analysis	167	(3)
Conclusions	170	(1)
The Old English to-infinitive is a clause	171	(8)
Introduction	171	(1)
The distribution of the to-infinitive	171	(3)
Positional evidence from objects	174	(1)
Evidence from to-infinitival relatives	175	(2)
Scrambling: evidence against CP status?	177	(1)
Conclusions	178	(1)
That-clauses and to-infinitives in competition	179	(10)
Evidence from two manuscripts of Gregory's Dialogues	179	(6)
Evidence from a quantitative study	185	(4)
Conclusions	189	(2)
The changing status of infinitival to	191	(40)
Introduction	191	(1)
The rise of the to-infinitive	192	(11)
The category change from noun to verb	192	(5)
The category change from prepositional phrase to noun phrase	197	(6)
The status of to in Old English	203	(5)
To as a non-finite modal	208	(3)
To moves overtly to T in Middle English	211	(9)
The emergence of to V and V	211	(4)
The OV/VO change	215	(3)
The lexicalization of T	218	(1)
Conclusions	219	(1)
The emergence and subsequent loss of for to	220	(5)
The grammaticalization and degrammaticalization of to	225	(4)
Conclusions	229	(2)
Part V. Changes in Middle English	231	(64)
The rise of to-infinitival Exceptional Case-Marking	233	(42)
Introduction	233	(2)
The analysis of to-infinitival ECMs in Present-day English	235	(4)
The ECM after want-verbs	239	(13)
Introduction	239	(1)
Reanalysis of object control to ECM	240	(3)
No direct competition between new ECM and old AcI	243	(2)
The want-verbs in the Paston Letters	245	(4)
Thematic differences between commanding and persuading persist	249	(3)
Conclusions	252	(1)
The ECM after believe-verbs	252	(21)
Restrictions on to-infinitival ECM with believe-verbs	252	(4)
The expression of unmarked themes after the loss of verb-second	256	(3)
Virus Theory	259	(5)
ECM and the Small clause	264	(2)
The to-infinitive as predicate after wesan	266	(5)
Unaccusatives in the wesan-construction	271	(2)
Conclusions	273	(2)
Innocent bystander: the loss of the indefinite pronoun man	275	(20)
Introduction	275	(1)
Traditional accounts of the loss of man	276	(1)
The four environments of man in Ælfric	277	(2)
Man in main clauses	279	(11)
Introduction	279	(1)
Man in SpecMP	279	(2)
The loss of V2 and information structure	281	(1)
Man clause-initial	282	(3)
Man as an ultra-indefinite	285	(4)
Conclusion	289	(1)
Man in subjunctive that-clauses: competition from arbitrary PRO	290	(3)
Man in other subclauses	293	(1)
Conclusion	294	(1)
Part VI. Summary and Conclusions	295	(12)
Summary and conclusions	297	(10)
Introduction	297	(1)
Origin of the to-infinitive	298	(2)
Competition between subjunctive clause and to-infinitive	300	(1)
The categorial status of the to-infinitive	301	(2)
The position of to	303	(1)
The value of extra-syntactic evidence	303	(4)
Appendix I: List of corpora used	307	(2)
Appendix II: Tables of complementation patterns	309	(4)
Appendix III: Functions of the to-infinitives in the C and H manuscripts of Gregory's Dialogues	313	(2)
References	315	(18)
Index	333