Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-dsjbd Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-20T10:24:03.585Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The rise of the to-infinitive: evidence from adjectival complementation1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 February 2010

AN VAN LINDEN
AN VAN LINDEN*
Affiliation:
Department of Linguistics, K.U.Leuven, Blijde-Inkomststraat 21, Postbus 3308, B-3000 Leuven, [email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This article presents a diachronic corpus-based study of the distribution of mandative that- and to-clauses complementing deontic adjectival matrices in the extraposition construction, as in It is essential to work upwards from easier workloads (CB). It shows that the to-infinitive encroaches on the that-clause from Early Middle English onwards and comes to predominate in Late Middle English. It thus adduces evidence for Los's (2005) account of the rise of the to-infinitive as verbal complement: against the generally held view that the to-infinitive replaced the bare infinitive, Los (2005) shows that it spread at the expense of the subjunctive that-clause in Middle English, e.g. after intention verbs and manipulative verbs. After considering various factors such as the distribution of the to-infinitive in the adjectival complementation system, the tense of the matrix of the adjectival constructions and the Anglo-Saxon versus Romance origin of the adjectives, I conclude that the rise of the to-infinitive with adjectival matrices in Middle English has to be explained by analogy between verbal and adjectival mandative constructions. In addition, this study shows that – unlike with the verbal constructions – the to-infinitive with adjectival matrices stabilizes at roughly a 3:1 ratio to the that-clause from Early Modern English onwards. For these later periods, finally, it is proposed that the clausal variation may be motivated by lexical determination, discourse factors such as information structure, and stylistic preferences.

Type
Research Article
Information
English Language & Linguistics , Volume 14 , Issue 1 , March 2010 , pp. 19 - 51
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2010

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Allen, Cynthia L. 1995. Case marking and reanalysis: Grammatical relations from Old to early Modern English. Oxford: Clarendon Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bennis, Hans. 1986. Gaps and dummies (Linguistic Models 9). Dordrecht: Foris.Google Scholar
Blake, Norman (ed.). 1992. The Cambridge history of the English language, vol. 2: 1066–1476. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bock, Hellmut. 1931. Studien zum Präpositionalen Infinitiv und Akkusativ mit dem to-Infinitiv. Anglia 55, 114–249.Google Scholar
Bopp, Franz. 1871 [1833–52]. Vergleichende Grammatik des Sanscrit, Send, Armenischen, Griechischen, Lateinischen, Latauischen, Altslavischen, Gothischen und Deutschen, vol. 3. Berlin: Dümmler.Google Scholar
Borkin, Ann. 1984. Problems in form and function. Norwood, NJ: Ablex.Google Scholar
Burnley, David. 1992. Lexis and semantics. In Blake (ed.), 409–99.Google Scholar
Callaway, Morgan. 1913. The infinitive in Anglo-Saxon. Washington, DC: Carnegie Institution.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cristofaro, Sonia. 2003. Subordination. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Dekeyser, Xavier. 1986. Romance loans in Middle English: A re-assessment. In Kastovsky, Dieter & Szwedek, Aleksander (eds.), Linguistics across historical and geographical boundaries: In honour of Jacek Fisiak on the occasion of his fiftieth birthday, vol. I: Linguistic theory and historical linguistics (Trends in Linguistics. Studies and Monographs 32), 253–63. Berlin: Moutin de Gruyter.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Denison, David. 1993. English historical syntax: Verbal constructions. London and New York: Longman.Google Scholar
De Smet, Hendrik. 2005. A corpus of Late Modern English Texts. ICAME Journal 29, 69–82.Google Scholar
De Smet, Hendrik. 2007. Nominal gerunds in 16th-century English: The function of the definite article. Folia Linguistica Historica 28/1–2, 77–113.Google Scholar
De Smet, Hendrik. 2008. Diffusional change in the English system of complementation. Gerunds, participles and for . . . to-infinitives. PhD dissertation, University of Leuven.Google Scholar
Duffley, Patrick J. 2000. Gerund versus infinitive as complement of transitive verbs in English: The problems of ‘tense’ and ‘control’. Journal of English Linguistics 28, 221–48.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dutch, Robert A. & Roget, Peter M.. 1970. Roget's Thesaurus of English words and phrases. London: Longman.Google Scholar
Elmer, Willy. 1981. Diachronic grammar: The history of Old and Middle English subjectless constructions (Linguistische Arbeiten 97). Tübingen: Niemeyer.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fischer, Olga C. M. 1992. Syntax. In Blake (ed.), 207–408.Google Scholar
Fischer, Olga C. M., van Kemenade, Ans, Koopman, Willem & van der Wurff, Wim. 2000. The syntax of Early English. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Givón, Talmy. 1980. The binding hiercharchy and the typology of complements. Studies in Language 4 (3), 333–77.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Givón, Talmy. 1990. Syntax: A functional-typological introduction, vol. 2. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins.Google Scholar
Halliday, Michael A. K. 1994. An introduction to Functional Grammar, 2nd edition. London: Arnold.Google Scholar
Huddleston, Rodney & Pullum, Geoffrey. 2002. The Cambridge grammar of the English language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hulk, Aafke & van Kemenade, Ans. 1993. Subjects, Nominative Case, Agreement, and Functional Heads. Lingua 89, 181–215.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jarad, Najib I. 1997. The origin and development of for-infinitives. PhD dissertation, University of Wales, Bangor.Google Scholar
Jespersen, Otto. 1940. A Modern English grammar on historical principles. London: Allen and Unwin.Google Scholar
Joseph, Brian D. 2002. On some control structures in Hellenistic Greek: A comparison with Classical and Modern Greek. Linguistic Discovery 1, 1–17.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kaltenböck, Gunther. 2000. It-extraposition and non-extraposition in English discourse. In Mair, Christian & Hundt, Marianne (eds.), Corpus linguistics and linguistic theory: Papers from the twentieth International Conference on English Language Research on Computerized Corpora, 157–75. Amsterdam: Rodopi.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kortmann, Bernd. 1991. Free adjuncts and absolutes in English: Problems of control and interpretation. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Kortmann, Bernd. 1995. Adverbial participial clauses in English. In Haspelmath, Martin & König, Ekkehard (eds.), Converbs in cross-linguistic perspective: Structure and meaning of adverbial verb forms – adverbial participles, gerunds, 189–237. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kuno, Susumu. 1972. Functional sentence perspective: A case study from English and Japanese. Linguistic Inquiry 3 (3), 269–320.Google Scholar
Langacker, Ronald. 1991. Foundations of cognitive grammar, vol. 2: Descriptive application. Stanford: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
Lass, Roger. 1992. Phonology and morphology. In Blake (ed.), 23–155.Google Scholar
Lass, Roger. 2006. Phonology and morphology. In Hogg, Richard & Denison, David (eds.), A history of the English language, 43–108. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lightfoot, Dwight W. 1979. Principles of diachronic syntax. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
López Couso, María J. & Naya, Belén Méndez. 1996. On the use of the subjunctive and modals in Old and Middle English dependent commands and requests: Evidence from the Helsinki Corpus. Neuphilologische Mitteilungen 97, 411–22.Google Scholar
Los, Bettelou. 1999. Infinitival complementation in Old and Middle English (LOT Dissertation Series 31). The Hague: Thesus.Google Scholar
Los, Bettelou. 2005. The rise of the to-infinitive. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Middle English dictionary: http://ets.umdl.umich.edu/m/med/ (accessed 20 October 2006).Google Scholar
Miller, D. Gary. 2002. Nonfinite structures in theory and change. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mitchell, Bruce. 1985a. Old English syntax, vol. 1. Oxford: Clarendon Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mitchell, Bruce. 1985b. Old English syntax, vol. 2. Oxford: Clarendon Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mustanoja, Tauno F. 1960. A Middle English syntax, vol. 1: Parts of speech. Helsinki: Société Néophilologique.Google Scholar
Noël, Dirk. 2003. Is there semantics in all syntax? The case of accusative and infinitive constructions vs. that-clauses. In Rohdenburg & Mondorf (eds.), 347–77.Google Scholar
Noonan, Michael. 2007. Complementation. In Shopen, Timothy (ed.), Language typology and syntactic description, vol. 2: Complex constructions, 2nd edition, 52–150. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ogawa, Hiroshi. 1989. Old English modal verbs: A syntactical study (Anglistica 26). Copenhagen: Rosenkilde and Bagger.Google Scholar
Övergaard, Gerd. 1995. The mandative subjunctive in American and British English in the 20th century (Acta Universitatis Upsaliensis. Studia anglistica Upsaliensia 94). Stockholm: Almqvist and Wiksell.Google Scholar
Oxford English dictionary: http://dictionary.oed.com/cgi/ (accessed 3 November 2006).Google Scholar
Pedersen, Ted. 1996. Fishing for exactness. Proceedings of the South Central SAS(c) User Group 96, 188–200.Google Scholar
Plank, Frans. 1984. The modals story retold. Studies in Language 8, 305–64.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rohdenburg, Günter. 1995. On the replacement of finite complement clauses by infinitives in English. English Studies 76 (4), 367–88.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rohdenburg, Günter. 1996. Cognitive complexity and increased grammatical explicitness in English. Cognitive Linguistics 7, 147–82.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rohdenburg, Günter. 2003. Cognitive complexity and horror aequi as factors determining the use of interrogative clause linkers in English. In Rohdenburg & Mondorf (eds.), 205–49.Google Scholar
Rohdenburg, Günter & Mondorf, Britta (eds.). 2003. Determinants of grammatical variation in English (Topics in English Linguistics 43). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rothwell, William. 1998. Arrivals and departures: The adoption of French terminology into Middle English. English Studies 79 (2), 144–65.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rudanko, Juhani 1998. Change and continuity in the English language: Studies on complementation over the past three hundred years. Lanham, MD: University Press of America.Google Scholar
Sweet, Henry. 1903. A new English grammar, vol. 2: Syntax. Oxford: Clarendon Press.Google Scholar
Thesaurus of Old English: http://leo.englang.arts.gla.ac.uk/oethesaurus/ (accessed 17 October 2006).Google Scholar
Traugott, Elizabeth C. 1972. A history of English syntax: A transformational approach to the history of English sentence structure (Transatlantic Series in Linguistics). New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston.Google Scholar
Traugott, Elizabeth C. 1992. Syntax. In Hogg, Richard M. (ed.), The Cambridge history of the English language, vol. 1: The beginnings to 1066, 168–289. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Turner, John F. 1980. The marked subjunctive in Contemporary English. Studia Neophilologica: A Journal of Germanic and Romance Languages and Literature 52, 271–7.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Van der Wurff, Wim. 1990. The easy-to-please construction in Old and Middle English. In Adamson, Sylvia M., Law, Vivien A., Vincent, Nigel & Wright, Susan (eds.), Papers from the 5th International Conference on English Historical Linguistics, 519–36. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Van Linden, An. 2008. Activity-oriented and characteristic-oriented constructions: The distribution of voice in the history of the post-adjectival infinitive. English Text Construction 1 (2), 239–66.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Van Linden, An. 2009. Dynamic, deontic and evaluative adjectives and their clausal complement patterns: A synchronic-diachronic account. PhD dissertation, University of Leuven.Google Scholar
Van Linden, An. Forthcoming. The clausal complementation of good in extraposition constructions: The emergence of partially filled constructions. In Hans Sauer, Ursula Lenker & Judith Huber (eds.), volume arising from the 15th International Conference on English Historical Linguistics. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins.Google Scholar
Van Linden, An & Davidse, Kristin. 2009. The clausal complementation of deontic-evaluative adjectives in extraposition constructions: A synchronic-diachronic approach. Folia Linguistica 43 (1), 175–217.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Visser, Fredericus Theodore. 1972. An historical syntax of the English language, vol. 2: Syntactical units with one verb (continued). Leiden: Brill.Google Scholar
Vosberg, Uwe. 2003. The role of extractions and horror aequi in the evolution of -ing complements in Modern English. In Rohdenburg & Mondorf (eds.), 305–27.Google Scholar
Warner, Anthony. 1982. Complementation in Middle English and the methodology of historical syntax: A study of the Wyclifite Sermons. London: Croom Helm.Google Scholar
Wierzbicka, Anna. 1988. The semantics of grammar. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.CrossRefGoogle Scholar