Front cover image for THE INFINITIVE IN EARLY MIDDLE ENGLISH PROSE

THE INFINITIVE IN EARLY MIDDLE ENGLISH PROSE

This is a descriptive study of infinitival usage in a group of early ME prose texts (specified in §1). The following points are examined: the occurrence of the inflected form of the infinitive (§2); the proportions in which the plain infinitive and infinitives with to or for to are found in individual texts (§3); the selection of the plain infinitive and the infinitive with to or for to in particular syntactic positions (§§4-14); and the general principles that may underlie the choice of infinitival form (§15)

Article, 1991