The Syntax of Early English - Cryptm.org

298 The syntax of early Englishchanges. There are two types of evidence, internal and comparative, to suggestthat the syntactic change itself may have been forced by other factors. Bothhave to do with word order changes taking place in the construction.Let us look at the internal evidence first, which means having a closer lookat the developments sketched by van der Gaaf, Visser and Brinton. We willlook in turn at the nature of the NP object, the presence of modal colouring,the occurrence of intransitive infinitives, the bleaching of have, and the wordorder.It is difficult to establish that the object of have was really any more concretein the Old English period than it was later. Non-concrete, ‘factive’ objects arefound early:(7) nu ic longe spell hæbbe to secgennenow I longe story have to tell‘now that I have a long story to tell you’ (Or 2.8.53.4)In (7), the object is factive, i.e. it refers to something ‘which has no prior existencebut is brought about by the action denoted by the infinitive’ (Brinton1991: 28). There is no difference with later examples from the Middle Englishperiod, as for instance in:(8) That Nature had a joye her to behelde (Chaucer Anelida & Arcite 80)Here too, the nature of joye is specified by the infinitive, just as the spell isactualized in (7) by the verb secgenne. Similarly, objects referring to ‘time’appear with have in Old English too:(9) a. Hwilum him ync æt he hæbbe fierst genogne to hreowsiannesometimes him seems that he has time enough to repent‘Sometimes it seems to him that he has time enough to repent’(CP 53.415.34)b. Ond a hi a tid hæfdon ymb æt to spreconneand when they the time had about that to speak‘And when they had time to speak about that’(Mart 5(Kotzor)446[MA20]B/20)It is difficult to establish whether there has been an increase in the number ofsuch objects. Fischer (1994a) considers the different types of havetoinfinitiveconstructions in the Helsinki corpus, covering the Old, Middle andearly Modern English periods (see the Appendix, reproduced at the end of thischapter). Although there is an absolute increase of such objects in the laterperiod, there is no relative increase, and there really seems to have been nochange in this respect.Likewise, the possibility of modal colouring is present from the very beginning,but the colouring is not necessarily ‘obligative’: