The Grammaticalization of the English to-infinitive

By Kristina Schmelzer

Seminar paper from the year 2012 in the subject English Language and Literature Studies - Linguistics, grade: 1,7, RWTH Aachen University (Anglistische Sprachwissenschaft), course: Grammaticalization, language: English, abstract: Grammaticalization means the transition of a lexical, autonomous form to a grammatical, dependent form. It is a process in which syntactic structures develop out of free discourse structures and that extends over long time periods (cf. Diewald 1997: 11). Hardly any phenomenon of linguistics has raised as many questions as the grammaticalization of the infinitive. The English language differentiates between two infinitive types: The bare infinitive, which is only left in certain constructions, is sometimes described as "a sort of grammatical fossil" (Curme 1931: 456, quoted in Duffley 1992: 12) and the to-infinitive, on the other hand, demonstrates the widely-used form of the infinitive. Haspelmath (1989: 287) gives a glimpse into the prevalent view, that "the to-] infinitive is the basic and unmarked form of the verb", which "carries no meaning of its own". The influential linguist Roman Jakobson states the definition as follows: Among all verbal forms, it is the infinitive which carries the minimal grammatical infor-mation. It says nothing either about the participants of the narrated event or about the relation of this event to other narrated events and to the speech event. (Jakobson 1957: 142; quoted in Haspelmath 1989: 287) Chomsky (1957:100) hypothesizes even more radically by saying that to is a morpheme that "can hardly be said to have a meaning in any independent sense" at all. However, there are different approaches and opinions about the grammaticalization of the to-infinitive and its status within linguistics. In his article "From purposive to infinitive - a universal path of grammaticization", published in 1989 via Folia Linguistica Historica, Martin Haspelmath questions the traditional definition of the infinitive. Using the G

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 3656559716
• ISBN13: 9783656559719
• Release Date: December 2013
• Publisher: Grin Verlag
• Length: 20 Pages
• Weight: 0.12 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.0" x 7.0" x 10.0"