NDLI: The rise of lexical subjects in English infinitives

Content Provider	Springer Nature Link
Author	Tanaka, Tomoyuki
Copyright Year	2007
Abstract	This paper attempts to account for the changing distribution of lexical subjects in English infinitives within the framework of the Minimalist Program, paying special attention to the role of the infinitival morpheme and the change in the category and formal features of the infinitive marker to. First, it is argued that from Old English to the 16th century, when the infinitival morpheme was present, the external argument of bare infinitives could be realized either as a lexical DP or the infinitival morpheme; then, the loss of the infinitival morpheme led to the situation that bare infinitives obligatorily have lexical subjects, as we see in bare infinitive complements to causative verbs in Present-day English. Next, focusing change in the category and formal features of the infinitive marker to, the following development of to-infinitives is proposed: (i) in Old English, to as a preposition had an inherent Case feature licensing the infinitival morpheme, which in turn functioned as the external argument of to-infinitives; (ii) in Early Middle English, to came to have a structural Case feature with the optional EPP feature, giving rise to to-infinitives with lexical subjects that are licensed by to; (iii) in Late Middle English, to began to lose its structural Case feature and have the feature specification with the EPP feature only as a functional category, giving rise to to-infinitives with lexical subjects that are licensed by the matrix v, as in the case Present-day English; (iv) this specification became the only possibility after the loss of the infinitival morpheme in the 16th century, at least for the types of to-infinitives investigated here.
Starting Page	25
Ending Page	67
Page Count	43
File Format	PDF
ISSN	13834924
Journal	The Journal of Comparative Germanic Linguistics
Volume Number	10
Issue Number	1
e-ISSN	15728552
Language	English
Publisher	Kluwer Academic Publishers
Publisher Date	2007-05-03
Publisher Place	Dordrecht
Access Restriction	Subscribed
Subject Keyword	Bare infinitive Case feature EPP feature Faire−Par (FP) construction Infinitival morpheme Infinitive marker Lexical subject To-infinitive Theoretical Languages Syntax Comparative Linguistics Germanic Languages Linguistics (general)
Content Type	Text
Resource Type	Article
Subject	Arts and Humanities Linguistics and Language

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1	Ministry of Education (GoI), Department of Higher Education	Sanctioning Authority	https://www.education.gov.in/ict-initiatives
2	Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur	Host Institute of the Project: The host institute of the project is responsible for providing infrastructure support and hosting the project	https://www.iitkgp.ac.in
3	National Digital Library of India Office, Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur	The administrative and infrastructural headquarters of the project	Dr. B. Sutradhar bsutra@ndl.gov.in
4	Project PI / Joint PI	Principal Investigator and Joint Principal Investigators of the project	Dr. B. Sutradhar bsutra@ndl.gov.in Prof. Saswat Chakrabarti will be added soon
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Bare resultatives

Bettelou Los, The Rise of The To-Infinitive, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005

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The rise of lexical subjects in English infinitives

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