Agreement, predication, and the rise of functional categories in nonfinite clauses

Abstract

This paper argues for the rise of functional categories in small clauses and bare infinitive complements by investigating their syntactic properties in the history of English. It is claimed that both of these nonfinite clause types have undergone morphological erosion that led to the rise of functional categories, where the theory of predication plays a crucial role in relating the two changes. Moreover, the structural changes of these two types of nonfinite clauses are shown to be neatly captured in terms of grammatical competition, with the structure with a new functional category competing with and gradually replacing the structure without it, in the transitional period of their historical development. © 2010, The English Linguistic Society of Japan. All rights reserved.