영어 수동부정사의 도입과 확산에 대하여

Kim, Hyeree. 2003. On the Introduction and the Spread of Passive Infinitives in English. English Language and linguistics 16, 1-23. The passive voice in the infinitive was not used in Old English except for such limited places as the complements of pre-modals, particular complex-transitive verbs, and the adjective wurðe 'worthy'. In Modern English, however, infinitive passives are used in a variety of constructions including those three just mentioned. This paper attempts to propose a new account of why the passive infinitive was introduced into and/or spread to the other constructions. After the careful examination of seven construction types in both Old English and Middle English, the paper refutes the previous claims of Latin influence (e.g. Callaway 1913) and word-order change (e.g. Fischer 1991) and argues that the functional shift of to-infinitive is the cause of the change in question. In Old English, to-infinitive had the function more nominal than verbal, and bare-infinitives had verba! function, whereby only the bare-infinitives could have the active and passive distinction. However, to-infinitives gained more verbal function over time and thus they could have the voice distinction.