68 
THE OBJECTIVE INFINITIVE. 
discover. It remains only to add that to many grammarians onginnan seems 
to have paled into a mere auxiliary, and its infinitive seems “ complementary ” 
in the narrower sense rather than objective. To me, too, onginnan often 
seems auxiliary, though oftener not, and the difficulty of drawing a hard-and- 
fast line between the two uses has led me to put it here rather than under the 
complementary use. 
With aginnan , too, the uninflected infinitive was probably the original con¬ 
struction: it is found 28 times, while the inflected infinitive is found only 5 
times ; and the latter occurs only in the late manuscript F of the Chronicle or, 
once, in the later years of manuscript E. 
With findan , the uninflected infinitive ( Elene 1255) is probably better con¬ 
sidered predicative to a subject accusative to be supplied. The inflected infinitive 
(.Daniel 544) is probably due to the fact that findan here means ‘to strive for/ 
In the one example of geleornian with an inflected infinitive {Bede 210.31) 
the infinitive corresponds to a Latin gerundive; but see the next paragraph, 
on leornian. 
Leornian is once followed by the uninflected infinitive, but in all other 
instances it is followed by an inflected infinitive. In one of the latter instances 
{Bede 246.7), the inflected infinitive is in translation of a Latin gerund. The 
only explanation that occurs to me of the six other inflected infinitives is this: 
possibly leornian denoted the striving for an end rather than the attainment 
thereof, and was consequently followed by an inflected infinitive. 1 Once 
(in A. S. Horn. & L. S. I. 253 a , 256) we have a series of two infinitives, 
each inflected. 
The only example of the inflected infinitive with myntan occurs in the later 
Chronicle (265 m , 1137 E f ), but several times the uninflected infinitive occurs 
both in prose and in poetry. Possibly the double regimen of the compound, 
gemyntan (with accusative (or to + dative) of thing and dative of person), has 
affected the simplex, myntan. 
(i b ) With a verb governing the genitive only {ablinnan, ‘ cease/ 1 desist 
from ’). The single inflected infinitive after ablinnan {Mlf. Horn. II. 74 1 ) 
immediately follows the verb; the one uninflected (. /Elf. L. S. XXX. 39) 
follows with but one word intervening; and the double construction is prob¬ 
ably due to the analogy of other verbs of cessation, which, as we saw in the 
preceding section, have a double regimen with the infinitive as with the noun. 
(c) With a few verbs not found with a case (j gestihhian , 1 determine/ 1 decide ; y 
gedristlcecan, ‘ presume ’)• 
To sum up the matter for the verbs taking both the uninflected and the 
inflected infinitive, the double construction is found, in far the larger number 
of instances, 2 with verbs having a double or triple regimen, that is, with verbs 
governing two cases at once or any one of two or three cases, or with verbs 
followed by a case or by a preposition plus an oblique case; and the distinction 
between the uninflected and the inflected infinitive is in the large such as we 
find with the different cases (genitive, dative, instrumental, and accusative) 
1 After writing the above, I came upon the following sentence in Wilmanns, l. c., p. 116: “ Nur bei wenigen 
hat sich der blosse Infinitiv behauptet: bei den Prat.-Prasentia ausser wissen, also bei mdgen, konnen, diirfen, 
sollen, milssen, und bei wollen und lernen; doch verbinden wir lernen mit dem Inf. mit zu, wenn nicht das Objekt, 
Bondern das Ziel des Lernens bezeichnet werden soli.” 
2 Exclusive of onginnan, an apparent rather than a real exception. 
