The Syntax of Early English - Cryptm.org

An outline of Middle English syntax 99(85) for hyt ys the custom of my contrey a knyght allweyes to kepe hysfor it is the custom of my country a knight always to keep hiswepyn with hymweapon with him‘for it is the custom in my country that a knight always keeps his weaponwith him’ (Malory Works 83.25)In (85) the NP a knyght functions more as the subject of the infinitive than asan NP dependent on custom. It is likely that the developments shown in(83)–(85) were connected, and that the spread of the passive infinitive alsoplayed a role here, in that it enabled the AcI to spread from direct perceptionverbs and causatives, to ‘persuade’ type verbs, as in (83), and later also to‘expect’ verbs, as in (84). For more details we refer the reader to chapter 7.The spread of the passive infinitive may, in turn, be related to the change inword order whereby objects ceased to occur in preverbal position. It is noteworthy,for instance, that a common Old English construction, the type hit isto donne, as in (86),(86) Eac is eos bisen to geencennealso is this example to be-think‘Also this example can/may/must be thought of’ (Bo 23.52.2)began to be replaced by a passive infinitive in Middle English, so that we getit is to be done, as in (87).(87) ey be to be blamed eft arfore‘they are to be blamed later for-that’ (Manning HS (Hr 1) 1546)At the same time, a construction which was not found in native Old English,viz. he is to come, began to become current in Middle English. The differencebetween the two constructions is that the first has a transitive verb (do), whilethe verb in the second, come, is intransitive. The first may have been transparentto speakers of Old English, a language with frequent preverbal objects,because the NP preceding the (verbal) infinitive in sentences like (86) functionsnot only as the subject of the matrix verb but also as the object of the infinitive,from which it also receives its thematic role. In other words, the relationbetween infinitive and NP is of both a semantic and a syntactic nature,whereas the relation of the NP to the existential verb is, is only weakly syntactic.However, this construction may have become opaque to speakers ofMiddle English: as preverbal objects became increasingly uncommon, speakersmay have tended to interpret the NP–infinitive sequence as subject–verb.Passivisation of the infinitive solved this particular problem, since it wouldturn the original object NP hit into a subject NP. The change in object positionand the passivization of hit is to donne also paved the way for the new he