부사적으로 사용된 부정사 구문에 관한 연구: Beowulf와 Canterbury Tales의 분석을 중심으로

Park, Sae-Gon 2003. A Study of English Infinitives used as Adverbials: With Reference to Beowulf and Canterbury Tales. English Language and Linguistics 16. 25-43. The purpose of this study is to examine the historical development of English infinitives used as adverbials, especially in terms of their use, forms, and positional relationship with main verbs on the basis of Beowulf and Canterbury Tales. I show that when infinitives were used as modifiers, inflected infinitives appeared in Old English while (for) to infinitives in Middle English. In other words, as an adverbial infinitive form, uninflected infinitives in Old English were replaced by (for) to infinitives in Middle English. This fact indicates that (for) to infinitives encroached on the domain of Old English uninflected infinitives in the ME period. Furthermore, it is shown that infinitives used as disjuncts, which had not been found in Old English texts, appeared in the form of (for) to infinitives in Middle English texts. In addition, a wider range of main verbs began to be used with infinitives in Middle English. In Old English, infinitives with the meaning of purpose were only found with a very limited number of motion verbs such as come and go. However, in Middle English, the kind of main verbs varied, and the infinitives began to receive various meanings such as purpose, result, cause, reason, means, concession. The word order of infinitives more or less changed to the present order with the simplification of inflectional endings in Middle English.