The Syntax of Early English - Cryptm.org

Changes in infinitival constructions 233SVO structures might also place this object after the infinitive. This indeedoccurs, as the Appendices show, most frequently with let (194 instances) andmuch less with the other verbs (a total of 131 instances was found for allother verbs).(25) a. He lette blauwen bemen; and nam all a burhwes . . .he lette blow trumpets, and took all the strongholds‘He caused the trumpets to be blown and took all the strongholds . . .’(Layamon Brut (Clg)2227)b. And kyng Arthure with the two kyngis lette departe the sevenand King Arthure with the two kings lette split up the sevenhondred knyghteshundred knights‘And King Arthur with the two kings let the seven hundred knights besplit up’ (Malory Works 23,9)The reason why this option was not often chosen may be that such a movewould result in an infinitival complement introduced by PRO arb, which is aconstruction that has been losing ground in the history of English (cf. Fischer1991: 165–71). In fact the new structure V fin–V inf(–NP) resembles that of auxiliaryverbs followed by infinitives, which are all cases of subject control. Sinceauxiliaries were also becoming much more common in the Middle Englishperiod, this may have helped to oust the PRO arbconstruction, which wassimilar on the surface. It is therefore perhaps not surprising that this ‘solution’is most frequently encountered with the verb let, which of all the verbs consideredin the corpus comes closest to an auxiliary (for more information onthe ‘auxiliarization’ of let, see Fischer 1992b: 39–41).(iii) A third way of avoiding the object-infinitival was to add an overtsubject for the infinitive. (26) contains an interesting example from the Brut,which has an object-infinitival in the more archaic Caligula Ms., while an overtsubject is added in the linguistically more modern Otho Ms.(26) a. And hæhte heo wite well fasteand commanded her guard well firmly (Layamon Brut (Clg)4801)b. and hehte am hine witie fasteand commanded them him to guard firmly‘And commanded it [the castle] to be guarded securely’(Layamon Brut (Otho)4801)This, however, cannot always have been a suitable option, because it forcesone to make the agent explicit when it is intended to be generic. This is thecase, for instance, in the awkward example in (27): the knyghtes mentionedthere appear quite out of the blue, and play no further role in the rest of thenarrative.