Bettelou Los is a Lecturer in Linguistics at the Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam. She graduated from the University of Amsterdam in 1986 and has since held teaching and research positions at the University of Amsterdam, the Vrije Universiteit, the University of Nijmegen and other colleges of higher education. She participates in the research program The Diachrony of Complex Predicates in West Germanic, and has published several papers on diachronic syntax. She contributes with Wim van der Wurff to the morphology and syntax section of The Year's Work in English Studies and is co-editing with Ans van Kemenade is co-editing The Blackwell Handbook of the History of English.

...a great achievement, highlighting the systematic distribution of OE to-infinitives described in terms of argument structure, as well as providing solid arguments that to-infinitives were in competition with subjunctive that-clauses, with the former replacing the latter. Moreover this book is written in a manner accessible to both philologists and theoretical linguists, and hence provides a basis for everyone interested in the development of English infinitives.

• PART I: INTRODUCTION ; 1. Introduction ; PART II: THE TO-INFINITIVE AS GOAL ; 2. The Expression of Purpose in Old English ; 3. The to-infinitive as GOAL-argument ; PART III: THE TO-INFINITIVE AS THEME ; 4. Intention ; 5. Commanding and Permitting ; 6. Commissives ; PART IV: SYNTACTIC STATUS ; 7. The Category of the to-infinitive ; 8. The Changing Status of Infinitival to ; PART V: CHANGES IN MIDDLE ENGLISH ; 9. The Rise of to-infinitival Exceptional case-Marking ; 10. Innocent Bystander: The Loss of the Indefinite Pronoun man ; PART VI: SUMMARY AND CONCLUSIONS ; 11. Summary and Conclusions ; Appendix ; References ; Index

Bettelou Los is a Lecturer in Linguistics at the Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam. She graduated from the University of Amsterdam in 1986 and has since held teaching and research positions at the University of Amsterdam, the Vrije Universiteit, the University of Nijmegen and other colleges of higher education. She participates in the research program The Diachrony of Complex Predicates in West Germanic, and has published several papers on diachronic syntax. She contributes with Wim van der Wurff to the morphology and syntax section of The Year's Work in English Studies and is co-editing with Ans van Kemenade is co-editing The Blackwell Handbook of the History of English.

...a great achievement, highlighting the systematic distribution of OE to-infinitives described in terms of argument structure, as well as providing solid arguments that to-infinitives were in competition with subjunctive that-clauses, with the former replacing the latter. Moreover this book is written in a manner accessible to both philologists and theoretical linguists, and hence provides a basis for everyone interested in the development of English infinitives.

• PART I: INTRODUCTION ; 1. Introduction ; PART II: THE TO-INFINITIVE AS GOAL ; 2. The Expression of Purpose in Old English ; 3. The to-infinitive as GOAL-argument ; PART III: THE TO-INFINITIVE AS THEME ; 4. Intention ; 5. Commanding and Permitting ; 6. Commissives ; PART IV: SYNTACTIC STATUS ; 7. The Category of the to-infinitive ; 8. The Changing Status of Infinitival to ; PART V: CHANGES IN MIDDLE ENGLISH ; 9. The Rise of to-infinitival Exceptional case-Marking ; 10. Innocent Bystander: The Loss of the Indefinite Pronoun man ; PART VI: SUMMARY AND CONCLUSIONS ; 11. Summary and Conclusions ; Appendix ; References ; Index