The Syntax of Early English - Cryptm.org

commaunded the crowne to be sett on the awtercommanded the crowne to be sett on the altar‘And when he had used it he took off his crown and commanded thecrown to be set on the altar’ (Malory Works 908.11)b. And as for all oer erondys that ye haue commandid for to be do, eyshall be do als sone as ei may be do‘And as for all the other errands that you have given orders to be done,they shall be done as soon as they can be done’ (Paston Letters 148.17)c. . . . and Debunham ded charge an other court ther e Sunday next afterto be holde‘. . . and Debenham ordered another court session to be held there nextSunday’ (Paston Letters 192.35)The appearance of passive infinitives after object-control verbs is syntacticallymuch more remarkable than their appearance after causatives andperception verbs, because after object-control verbs, it involves a newconstruction. The structure of an active sentence is different from that of apassive in the manner shown in (32).(32) i. He commanded him to set the crown on the altarNP SV finNP i[PRO ito infinitive]ii. He commanded the crown to be set on the altarNP SV fin[NP to infinitive]Changes in infinitival constructions 237In (32ii) the relevant NP has now become part of the clausal object of thematrix verb. But the construction is clearly different from the type of AcI usedafter causatives and perception verbs. There is no bare infinitive but a toinfinitive,and the tense domains of infinitive and matrix verb are not clearlysimultaneous. In fact, this type looks very much like the Latin type of AcI (i.e.the AcI following ‘believe’ verbs), which did not yet occur in Old English (asnoted above in (21)). How do we explain this development? It seems to us thatthe cause here must be analogical extension, the passive infinitive spreadingfrom causatives to (causative) object-control verbs.At more or less the same time (second half of the fourteenth century) thatwe see these passive AcI’s occurring after object control verbs, we witness theappearance of Latin-type AcI constructions after the so-called verba cogitandiet declarandi (verbs expressing a claim, expectation, belief etc.).Borrowing from Latin indeed plays an important role in the introduction ofthese constructions, as shown by Warner’s (1982: 134–57) comparison of twoversions of the Wycliffite Bible (the so-called Early Version being a very literaltranslation, the Late Version being much more free). Warner (1982: 134) alsonotes that the Latin AcI was ‘at first adopted principally where surface (NP