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PREFACE. 
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An attempt is here made to give a detailed history of the Infinitive in Anglo- 
Saxon and to treat some substitutes therefor. The study is based upon a statis¬ 
tical reading of the whole of Anglo-Saxon literature with the exception of the 
glosses and of a few out-of-prints. For a specific statement, see the bibliog¬ 
raphy. Moreover, in all the more definitely known translations, the Latin 
originals, duly noted in the bibliography, have been read statistically. I have 
endeavored to make my statistics complete , 1 but, in such a mass of details, 
occasional omissions are inevitable. I trust, however, that they will not prove 
so numerous or so serious as to invalidate this history of the Infinitive in 
Anglo-Saxon. A chapter is added on “the Infinitive in the Other Germanic 
Languages,” which of necessity rests upon the investigations of others, but 
which will, I hope, be found something more than a summary. 
Perhaps a word concerning its general plan may facilitate the reading of my 
study. After a brief discussion concerning the nature and the classification of 
the infinitive, I have striven to give, first, the facts concerning its several uses 
in Anglo-Saxon; and, secondly, an interpretation of these facts. Accordingly, 
in the appendix, all occurrences of each use are recorded in alphabetic sequence; 
and, in the chapters dealing with the respective uses, copious illustrations 
are given in smaller syntactic groups, in which latter, again, the words are 
arranged alphabetically. Differences of opinion as to the classification of indi¬ 
vidual examples are inevitable, but I have tried in each use to distinguish the 
normal from the abnormal, and, without ignoring the latter, to base my classi¬ 
fication and my discussion mainly upon the former. Readers and critics will 
be the more generous in their judgment of my classifications when they con¬ 
sider the large number of examples to be classified and the inherent difficulty 
of the task, — a difficulty aggravated by the fact that, in both the English and 
the Germanic fields, minute classification is not attempted in several of the 
special investigations made of the infinitive. 
The comment is, for the most part, given in the sections headed “Differ¬ 
entiation of the Two Infinitives” and in the chapter on “the Origin of the Con¬ 
structions of the Infinitive in Anglo-Saxon.” In this latter chapter, too, are 
summarized the Latin correspondents of the infinitives in the closer Anglo- 
va Saxon translations. Both in the historical and in the interpretative sections 
I have given, so far as I have been able to discover it, the history of opinion 
concerning the construction in question. As the table of contents shows, I 
have made the use rather than the form of the infinitive the determining factor 
c in my chapter-division; but, while this is true, I have everywhere sharply 
separated the inflected infinitive from the uninflected. In a word, I have 
endeavored to preserve the due balance between form and function so much 
1 Except of the Predicative Infinitive with Auxiliary Verbs, the full tabulation of which 
seemed unnecessary. 
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