The Syntax of Early English - Cryptm.org

294 The syntax of early Englishresulting in a fixed haveto-infinitiveNP word order (note the sudden shiftin word order between (4a) and (4b), which is left unexplained in this proposal).In this sketch of the putative development of have to, grammaticalizationproceeds along a path of semantic change; the syntactic changes are subordinateto it, following hard on the heels of the semantic changes. Becausethe development is seen as gradual (one of the tenets of the grammaticalizationhypothesis), it is extremely hard to disentangle the various stages. This isnoticeable also from the fact that although van der Gaaf and Visser do distinguishthree stages, they do not really indicate the order of these stages inreal time. All are said to occur already in Old English, with the proviso thatthe word order change is clearly later; according to van der Gaaf (1931: 184),‘it is still rare in Middle English; [and] only became firmly established inModern English’.It has been noted by Bock (1931: 164–5), Mitchell (1985: § 950 ff.) andBrinton (1991: 19–20) that there are quite a few problems with this account,which all have to do with the fact that the haveto-infinitive construction isdifficult to interpret since the types occurring in the three stages are formallyindistinguishable. It is therefore virtually impossible to keep the various stagesapart. It is probably not accidental that van der Gaaf attests all three constructionsalready in Old English. The only concrete indication in the abovedescription of the stages is a change in word order, but as noted by van derGaaf, this change is relatively late. The interpretation of the object NP aseither (i) an argument of have or (ii) an argument of the infinitive, and therelated interpretation as to which functions as the main verb (i.e. in construction(i), have is the main verb, and in (ii) the infinitive) depends ultimately onthe interpretation of have as conveying either possession or obligation. Quiteobviously, we are running around in circles here.In the literature, two ways of resolving this vicious circle are found: the firstis in Bock and Mitchell, who deny that there was such a development; thesecond is in Brinton, who tries to find additional pieces of evidence which mayenable us to break through the circularity of argument. For Bock and Mitchellit is not difficult to ignore the development sketched above, because they areonly concerned with Old English. The only hard piece of evidence for theactuality of the grammaticalization development of have in Old Englishwould be examples where no object NP is involved, i.e. instances where theinfinitive is intransitive. If there is no object NP, have can no longer be a fullverb of possession and must have developed into some kind of auxiliary. Theonly two ‘intransitives’ found in Old English can convincingly be shown to bereally transitive (cf. Mitchell 1985: § 953):