Abstract :
This article presents a diachronic corpus-based study of the distribution of mandative
that- and to-clauses complementing deontic adjectival matrices in the extraposition
construction, as in It is essential to work upwards from easier workloads (CB). It shows
that the to-infinitive encroaches on the that-clause from Early Middle English onwards
and comes to predominate in Late Middle English. It thus adduces evidence for Los’s
(2005) account of the rise of the to-infinitive as verbal complement: against the generally
held view that the to-infinitive replaced the bare infinitive, Los (2005) shows that it spread
at the expense of the subjunctive that-clause in Middle English, e.g. after intention verbs
and manipulative verbs. After considering various factors such as the distribution of the
to-infinitive in the adjectival complementation system, the tense of the matrix of the
adjectival constructions and the Anglo-Saxon versus Romance origin of the adjectives, I
conclude that the rise of the to-infinitive with adjectival matrices in Middle English has
to be explained by analogy between verbal and adjectival mandative constructions. In
addition, this study shows that – unlike with the verbal constructions – the to-infinitive
with adjectival matrices stabilizes at roughly a 3:1 ratio to the that-clause from Early
Modern English onwards. For these later periods, finally, it is proposed that the clausal
variationmay be motivated by lexical determination, discourse factors such as information
structure, and stylistic preferences.