Three Types of the Infinitive: Diachronic Change and Synchronic Variation = Three Types of the Infinitive: Diachronic Change and Synchronic Variation

다국어 초록 (Multilingual Abstract)

The purpose of this paper is to present a diachronic study for the synchronic variation of the infinitive in English. The rise of the to-infinitive is mainly due to the diachronic shift from the synthetic to the analytic language in Old and Middle English. By discussing the rise of the to-infinitive marker from the perspective of diachronic change, I argue for the emergence of three different types of the infinitive in the analytic Middle English: the root infinitive, the raising infinitive and the control infinitive. The syntactic variation found in current English infinitives can be explained well in a diachronic study since the current synchronic variation reflects the diachronic change in Old English and Middle English. I propose that the structures of the infinitive have been expanded from a light verb phrase vP (of the root infinitive) to a defective TP (of the raising Infinitive) and then finally to a full phrase CP (of the control Infinitive). In this paper, the affix analysis of the to-infinitive marker in Old English explains the lack of split infinitives, the lack of P-stranding and the lack of the ECM structures in Old English more explicitly. The diachronic analysis for the synchronic variation found in the infinitive in Modern English provides a quite simple and economical explanation with the proposed three types of vP, TP and CP structures. (Hanbat National University)