A Diachronic Approach to Bare Infinitives

I argue that the bare infinitival complement of bare infinitival perception constructions is analyzed as having a single clausal structure of TP with the default tense feature of zero morpheme. Bare infinitives in Old English as well as in present-day English seem to have both nominal and verbal features. These properties can be inferred from the syntactic, semantic and morphological characteristics of bare infinitives: bare infinitival complements show the syntactic structure of predicative bare infinitive with accusative subject, the interpretation of bare infinitival perception constructions is marked by the temporal simultaneity between a bare infinitive and a matrix perception verb and morphological inflections of bare infinitives show the historical residue of nominal declension.