On Tuesday, November 12, 2019 at 9:32:28 AM UTC-7, Peter Moylan wrote:
[split infinitives]
Post by Peter MoylanThanks. But when did the particle "to" in "to go" first appear in
English? It wasn't there in Anglo-Saxon days, as far as I know.
The OED says,
History:—Beside the simple infinitive, or verbal substantive in -an
(Middle English -en, -e), Old English, like the other West Germanic
languages, had a dative form of the same or a closely-related noun,
which in Old English ended in -anne, -enne, in Middle English
reduced successively to -ene, -en, -e, and was thus at length
levelled with the simple infinitive, and with it reduced to the
uninflected verb-stem. This dative form was always preceded or
‘governed’ by the preposition tó ‘to’. By many German writers it
is called the ‘gerund’, after the Latin verbal noun in -ndum. In
modern English the functions of the Latin gerund are more properly
discharged by the verbal noun in -ing, and it is therefore more
convenient to speak of the Old English form in -anne as the
‘dative infinitive’ or ‘infinitive with to’. Originally, to before
the dative infinitive had the same meaning and use as before
ordinary substantives, i.e. it expressed motion, direction,
inclination, purpose, etc., toward the act or condition
expressed by the infinitive; as in ‘he came to help (i.e. to
the help of) his friends’, ‘he went to stay there’, ‘he prepared
to depart (i.e. for departure)’, ‘it tends to melt’, ‘he
proceeded to speak’, ‘looking to receive something’. But in
process of time this obvious sense of the preposition became
weakened and generalized, so that tó became at last the ordinary
link expressing any prepositional relation in which an infinitive
stands to a preceding verb, adjective, or substantive. Sometimes
the relation was so vague as scarcely to differ from that between
a transitive verb and its object. This was esp. so when the verb
was construed both transitively and intransitively. There were
several verbs in Old English in this position, such as onginnan
to begin, ondrǽdan to dread, bebéodan to bid, order, bewerian
to forbid, prevent, gelíefan to believe, þencean to think, etc.;
these are found construed either with the simple (accusative)
infinitive, or with tó and the dative infinitive. There was
also a special idiomatic use (sense B. 13a) of the infinitive
with tó as an indirect nominative, where logically the simple
infinitive might be expected. From these beginnings, the use of
the infinitive with to in place of the simple infinitive, helped
by the phonetic decay and loss of the inflections and the need
of some mark to distinguish the infinitive from other parts of
the verb and from the cognate noun, increased rapidly during
the late Old English and early Middle English period, with the
result that in modern English the infinitive with to is the
ordinary form, the simple infinitive surviving only in particular
connections, where it is very intimately connected with the
preceding verb (see below). To a certain extent, therefore,
i.e. when the infinitive is the subject or direct object, to
has lost all its meaning, and become a mere ‘sign’ or prefix
of the infinitive. But after an intransitive verb, or the
passive voice, to is still the preposition. In appearance,
there is no difference between the infinitive in ‘he proceeds
to speak’ and ‘he chooses to speak’; but in the latter to
speak is the equivalent of speaking or speech, and in the
former of to speaking or to speech. In form, to speak, is
the descendant of Old English tó specanne; in sense, it is
partly the representative of this and largely of Old
English specan.
Sorry, I didn't mark the italics.
--
Jerry Friedman