AIC developed from the Old English simple finite sentence and represents a reduced clause with subject being implicitly available in its structure. The latter implies that surface and underlying form of AIC are not identical. This construction is analyzed as the one with PRO-drop (or empty) subject in terms of N.Chomsky’s Government and Binding Theory (1993). Following these principles, it is maintained that historic loss of subject in AIC in Middle English may be explained through applying the elementary rule of deletion. For example,



The PRO-drop subject appears to be an obligatory argument of all categories of verbs that make the centre of the construction in question. In the deep structure AIC has subject-predicate relations: I want to tell the truth or I tell the truth, while it has a zero representation of subject
(or latent subject) on the surface structure level.

Chapter 2 “Absolute infinitive construction in Middle English”

focuses on the origin of AIC and the main tendencies and reasons of its development, structure and functioning in Middle English texts.

For several centuries Latin was a very prestigious language as it was a source of terminology for Western Europe and in many respects a model for imitating in the spheres of the religious, philosophical, natural science and literature. Therefore, in historical linguistics there exists an assumption that the AIC entered the English language through indirect influence of loan translations from Latin.

Sometimes the explanation of this or that phenomenon as a loan from other languages turns out to be always more tempting than the attempt to find out its sources in the language in question. The identification of foreign influence in syntax is one of the most difficult tasks in historical investigation. The overestimation of Latin influence and attributing almost all innovations occurring in language to this influence are not always methodologically correct.

I came to a conclusion that Latin could only accelerate the process of development and spread of such constructions in English, as those syntactical phenomena which are not inherent in the receiving language cannot remain and function in it for centuries.

The original monuments of the Old English written language support the statement that AIC is autochthon in English where it functions as a simple finite sentence:


(transl. by F.B.Gummere).

Consequently not only diachronic changes in the process of language development, but also the influence of rhetorical art (ars bene dicendi) and the rise of argumentative speech caused the spread of the AIC. The latter is confirmed by radical changes in the structure and semantics of the given constructions.

The development of the AIC falls into three periods: Middle English, Early Modern English and Modern English. During the 12^th–13^th centuries only sporadic occurrences of the AIC are fixed: ME selcouthe to saye (Old English Homilies) – ‘strange to say’ and

(Layamon) – ‘to tell you the truth’. Later, in the 14^th–15^th centuries, AIC was mostly used in the East Midland dialect (see Table 1).

Table 1
Distribution of AIC in Middle English Dialects

According to the structure, the AIC splits into extended and non-extended types, which in their turn are divided into several subtypes. In Middle English the unextended AIC is characterized by the “subject-object-verb” order (SOV): the soth to sey (Sir Cleges) – ‘to tell the truth’, shortly to expresse (Lydgate) – ‘to express shortly’ or wonderfull to neuen (Towneley Plays) – ‘wonderful to know’, while the word order of the extended AIC is of the “subject-verb-object”-type (SVO).

The latter is common for the simple sentence structure: to telle yow hir wordes and hir chere (Chaucer) – ‘to tell [report] you her words and her kindness’.

Unextended type consists of an infinitive and one or two complements. This type is rather stereotypical because it has a definite scheme according to which new constructions are formed. The infinitive can occupy either the initial or final position in AIC. Therefore, object, adverbial and adjectival subtypes are distinguished.

Object type in Middle English has 2 models – V_inf+O: for to telle trouthe (Richard the Redeless) – ‘to tell the truth’ and O+V_inf. of this mater to speik (Henryson) – ‘to speak of this matter’. Adverbial type consists of Adv+V_inf pleynly for to telle (Lydgate) – ‘to tell it plainly’ and V_inf +Adv: for to telle redily (Gower) – ‘to tell it readily’. Adjectival type – V_inf +A: for to be brefe (Lydgate) – ‘to be brief’ and A+V_inf: softe to ansuare (Sir Perceval of Gales) – ‘to answer softly’.

Extended type is longer than the unextended one, because it consists of more than five elements (adverbs, adjectives, pronouns or nouns) and hence contains more information. The extended ones are also divided into object, adjectival, adverbial subtypes.

Adverbial type consists of two models – Adv+V_inf +Adv: for shortly for to tellen at o word (Chaucer) – ‘to tell it shortly at one word’ and V_inf +Adv+Adv: to tellen short and pleyn (Chaucer) – ‘to tell it shortly and plainly’. Object type has only one model V_inf +O+O: for to telle you Pe trouth (Caxton) – ‘to tell you the truth’.

There are also constructions of combined complementation. As a rule, they are the most variable both structurally and semantically and are divided into (i) object-adverbial and (ii) object-adjectival types. Object-adverbial AIC consists of five models. V_inf +O+Adv: forto telle it more plein (Gower) – ‘to tell it more plainly’; V_inf +Adv+O: to speke more of the name (Langland) – ‘speak more of the name’; Adv+V_inf+O: bot now to speke of mi matiere (Gower) – ‘but now to speak of my matter’; Adv+O+V_inf: shortly of this storie for to trete (Chaucer) – ‘to tell this story shortly’ and O+Adv+V_inf: to the poynt right for to go (Visser) – ‘to go right to the point’. Object-adjectival constructions have three models: V_inf +A+O: to be plain to yowe (Paston Letters) – ‘to be plain to you’; A+V_inf +O: the yemer to tellen trouthe (Gower) – ‘to tell the sad truth’ and A+O+V_inf: schort tale forto telle (Gower) – ‘to tell a short tale’.

The above-mentioned examples show that the infinitive can occur in initial, medial and final position, which is explained through pragmatic purposes (i.e. marked and unmarked word order).
In the example below, the deep structure shows that in this construction an inversion has taken place as the NP2 is pre-posed to the infinitive (V_inf):

ME: Lord, the sooth to say,|
Full well we understand Mahound is God veray, |
And ye are lord of ilka land (Girdlers & Nailers) –
Lord, to tell the truth, we understand well,
that Mahaund is the real God,
and you are the Lord of every land.

(i) [S[NP1[PRO][VP[NP2[Det+N][V_inf'[V_inf]]]]]]
(ii)



AICs existing in Middle and Early Modern English are represented by the following extended and unextended structural varieties: (a) to make a long story short; (b) to speak shortly; (c₁) to speak and (c₂) shortly. The named constructions are considered to be in hierarchical relations, where the (b)- and (c₁-c₂)-types are assumed to be further steps in the process of grammaticalization as the increasing drift towards analyticity.

In 14^th–15^th centuries the distribution of AIC grows in the texts of East Midland, West Midland and Northern dialects. It can be claimed that till the end of the 15^th century not only quantitative but also qualitative changes took place in the system of AIC.

Chapter 3 “Structural and functional peculiarities of absolute infinitive construction in Early Modern and Modern English”

shows the development of AIC, its structural organization, frequency of its usage in the texts and pragmatic aspect of its functioning in Early Modern and Modern English.

The AICs are often used with abstract nouns performing the function of a complement (ME faille, sooth, trouthë, soPe, EModE truth, ModE truth, justice) and with the following adverbs which are used to express the speaker’s attitude towards information, to reveal its contents and to characterize the events from different sides and specify the infinitive (ME soothly, shortly, feiPely, ottherly, platly, vulgarly, pleynly, brevely, finally, generally, folowyngly, verrily and propirly, selcouthe, EModE plainly, strictly, quickly, wisely, liberally, ModE directly, truly, explicitly, precisely, frankly etc.). During 16^th–19^th centuries we observe not only quantitative but also qualitative enrichment of adjectives in AICs: ME schort, plein, brefe, wonderfull, EModE plain, true, brief, short, strange, just, honest, ModE explicit, cautious, sad, serious, concise, fair, precise, difficult, incredible.

It should be noted that both the grammatical characteristics of the infinitives and their semantics are equally important in the investigation of AICs. The infinitives are represented by four semantic classes: verba declarandi (to telle, to talke, to seyn, to quote, to speke, to ansuare, to expresse); verba sentiendi (to concluden, to descrive, to wiit, to confirm, to knawe); verba agitandi (to make, to go, to perform, to work, to taken, to stonden, to come, to pass, to procede); verba vera (to be).

Diachronic changes in language and hence in the sentence development directly influenced the structure of these constructions. The data show that the usage of unextended AIC in the texts of the 12^th–15^th centuries is 77.6%, later in Early Modern English it reduces to 70.15%, but during the 18^th–19^th centuries it achieves 81.5% (see Table 2).

Table 2
Frequency of non-extended and extended structural types of AIC in 12^th–19^th centuries



During the Early Modern English period the grammatical structure of extended types becomes more complicated. The semantics of AIC is enriched due to the usage of infinitive complements. It was observed that till the end of the 19^th century those constructions, in which infinitive occupies the mid- or final position gradually disappear.

In this dissertation 24 structural types are described, 20 of which existed in Middle English, 21 – in Early Modern English, and 15 – in Modern English period. Table 3 shows that the number of extended types considerably reduced in Modern English, while the above-mentioned 7 unextended types (V_inf, V_inf O, OV_inf, V_inf Adv, AdvV_inf, V_inf A, AV_inf) remained unchanged throughout these periods. This phenomenon can also be explained by the speaker’s need to compress the information in order to minimize his speech efforts.

Table 3
The structure of unextended and extended types of AIC (12^th–19^th centuries)



In Early Modern English (16^th–17^th centuries) the frequency of the AIC reduces and its structure becomes more complicated. However, during the 18^th–19^th centuries the frequency of its usage in texts increases, its structure gets simplified and the SVO-order dominates in both extended and non-extended types. The frequency of those models that manifest SVO order is 89.3%, and SOV is only 4%. By the end of the 20^th century the structure of AIC becomes more systematic and the usage of more stereotyped constructions considerably grows.
And finally, the following four main semantic classes of the AIC are distinguished:

(i) By using evaluative constructions, the speaker or writer wants to emphasize or demonstrate his knowledge, or to express his frankness: ME shortly to tellen as it was (Chaucer), all the soothe for to saye (Chaucer), EModE to speak to you like an honest man (Shakespeare), ModE to bring the truth to light (Fielding), to tell your honour the evendown truth (Scott).

(ii) Connective constructions denote the beginning of a conversation: ME to begyn (Paston Letters), EModE to begin this (Osborne), ModE to commence then (Poe); continuation: ME bot nou to speke of mi matiere (Gower), EModE to tell ye further (Fletcher), ModE but to go on regularly (Sterne); conclusion: ME to go to the conclusion (Chaucer), EModE but to see the end (Dekker); ModE to sum up the matter (Hawthorne); EModE to return to his question (Defoe), ModE to bring matters more to a point (Gaskell).

(iii) Specifying AICs bring additional information of what the following sentence is going to be about: ME for to speken of hire conscience (Chaucer), EModE to speak to the question more largely (Bunyan), ModE to give an example of this (Montagu).

(iv) Qualifying absolute constructions characterize the manner of speaking or the way of expressing a thought, for instance, correctness: ME as for to speke properly (Chaucer), EModE to speak more properly (Shakespeare), ModE to speak more correctly (Scott); briefness: ME for to be brefe (Lydgate), EModE to make this part of the story short (Defoe), to declare it in fewe wordes (Elyot), ModE to speak more narrowly (Browne), to say all in a word (Montagu); generalization: ME as to speken in comune (Chaucer), ModE to speak more generally (Browne); confidence between the author and the reader: EModE but to be more private (Defoe), ModE to speak quietly among oursells (Scott); precision: EModE to say precisely (Shakespeare), ModE to speak with more precision (Wollstonecraft); boldness: EModE to be bold with you (Shakespeare), ModE to say a bold Word (Gay), to speak out boldly at once (Fielding); sadness: ME teirfull to tell (Gologras & Gawain), ModE sad to say (Hardy).

Chapter 4 summarizes the results of this study and offers several conclusions about AIC and perspectives for further investigations.

To sum up, the analysis of AIC functioning in the Middle English, Early Modern English and Modern English texts and comparison of the results of the three historical periods helped to discover the essential changes both in its structure and in the usage of this construction. All these facts show the tendency of its consistent development during the 12^th–19^th centuries.

Bibliography



Abbreviations
AIC – absolute infinitive construction
AICs – absolute infinitive constructions
EModE – Early Modern English
ME – Middle English
ModE – Modern English
OE – Old English