The Syntax of Early English - Cryptm.org

Changes in infinitival constructions 231Your room is not fit to be seenHe is fit to serve as a captain in the armyc. It is time to finish the workIt is time for the work to be finishedThis is a possibility to be gravely considered / ? to gravely considerd. Jesus came to John to be baptizedIt is terrible to see a foreigner be treated like thatWe will not here consider the causes of the rise of the passive infinitive in thesepositions in great detail (we instead refer the interested reader to Fischer1991), but the variation in this area tells us something about why the passiveinfinitive was introduced in positions other than the post-modal one, fromMiddle English onwards. Very briefly, the need for a passive infinitive seemsto depend on quite a number of factors such as the position and the type ofNP that functions as the semantic object (i.e. the NP that bears the -role of‘patient’) of that infinitive. If the object is placed after the infinitive (as in thefirst example of (24c)), the active infinitive is the rule in Modern English. Ifthe object can be moved to the matrix clause syntactic subject position, theactive infinitive is usually preferred. This is particularly true when there is anadjective in the matrix predicate which has a thematic (subject) relation withthis NP, as in the first two examples of (24b), and the second example of (24a),where to blame is similar to blameworthy. It is interesting to note that whenthe thematic relation between adjective and subject is less strong, there is atendency to use the passive infinitive, as in the third instance of (24b), wheretoo funny has as strong a semantic relation to the verb as it has to the subject.This is even clearer when the adjective is in an adverbial form and thereforerelated only to the verb and not to the subject; in that case a passive infinitivemust be used, as in Jack Rapley is not easily to be knocked off his feet (Visser1963–73: § 1921). When the object that has to be raised to matrix subject positionis inanimate, a passive infinitive is usually preferred, perhaps becauseinanimate NPs are dispreferred as subjects, which are generally animate inEnglish, hence the differences between the examples of (24a) and the differencebetween the fit examples of (24b). An additional reason here, of course,is that fit is ambiguous, and the difference in infinitives is needed to distinguishthe passive (‘suitable’) and active (‘appropriate, capable’) meanings of theadjective fit. 11 It is only when the NP in question has not been raised to the11This is also the reason why in (23b) a passive infinitive must be used after ready inthe Modern English translation. Like fit, ready has both an active and a passivesense, since it can mean both ‘willing’, ‘showing readiness’ or ‘made ready, ready tobe used’. In the active sense, an active infinitive is obligatory, as in I am ready to suffertorments. For more information on how these ‘two-faced’ adjectives came into thelanguage (they were very rare in Old English), see Greenough and Kittredge (1902:272); for how they combine with infinitives, see Fischer (1991: 175–9).