128 THE PREDICATIVE INFINITIVE WITH DATIVE SUBJECT. 
Mat. 17.4 a : god ys us her to beonne = Domine, bonum est nos hie esse. 1 — JElf. 
Hept.: Gen. 2.18 a : Nis na god Sisum men ana to wunienne = Non est bonum 
hominem esse solum. — MJc. 14.31: And tSeah me gebyrige mid <5e to sweltenne 
= Et si oportuerit me simul common tibi. — L. 11.42 a : t5as <5ing eow gebyrede to 
donne, and ba bing ne forlsetan (sic!) - hsec autem oportuit facere, et ilia non 
omittere. — Bede 196.17: Hwset woldest bu, min domne biscop, bset cynelice 
hors bsem bearfan syllan, be be gedafenade agan (sic!) to habbanne = 156.18: 
Quid uoluisti, domine antistes, equum regium, quern te conueniebat proprium 
habere, pauperi dare? 
True, in the Anglo-Saxon examples, the dative usually is next to the finite 
verb, but at times it is not, as in L. 12.12; and in the examples from the Old 
High German, below, Chapter XVI, several times the dative is separated from 
the principal verb. Moreover, while Professor Streitberg emphasizes the fact 
that, in the examples which he cites of the Gothic dative with infinitive, “ der 
Dativ steht fast ausnahmslos hinter dem Infinitiv, wie im Griech. das Subject 
des Akk. m. Inf.,” 2 at times, as in 2 Cor. 7.7, cited by Professor Streitberg him¬ 
self, the dative precedes the infinitive as in the Greek original the accusative 
precedes its infinitive; and both pre-position and postposition of the dative 
seem to me to result from a slavish rather than an independent handling of the 
original. Moreover, in our Anglo-Saxon examples the dative regularly pre¬ 
cedes the infinitive, while in Old High German it sometimes precedes and some¬ 
times follows it. These facts lead me to the conclusion that little, if any, 
significance is to be attached to the fact that the dative generally follows the in¬ 
finitive in Gothic. Nor do I think that in the Gothic examples much, if any, 
weight is to be attached to the separation of the dative from the chief verb, 
since this separation, too, comes of following the order of words in Greek. Two 
of the chief arguments offered for setting up a genuine dative-with-infinitive 
construction after impersonals seem to me, therefore, considerably weakened, if 
not nullified. 
It may be urged, however, that the above examples from Anglo-Saxon 
differ radically from the Gothic example in that in the latter we have a well 
nigh colorless word, warp, translating the Greek cyeWo, while the chief verbs 
in Anglo-Saxon (gebyrian, gedafenian, and beon (wesan) + an adjective are more 
datival in sense. There is a difference, to be sure, but not such as to preclude 
the Anglo-Saxon examples from being included in the same general category 
with the Gothic, I think; for the dative-with-infinitive in the Slavic languages 
— where the construction in question is most frequent — arose, as Miklosich 3 
tells us, because of the very large number of dative-governing verbal 
nouns therein; — a fact of which I was not aware until I had independently 
come to the conclusion that, in the Anglo-Saxon examples above given, we 
more usually have the dative and the infinitive because of the datival force 
of the chief verbs, a force, however, that is occasionally overcome by the trans¬ 
lator’s following the Latin original and giving us an accusative and infinitive. 
When we have the dative, though, we have not in Anglo-Saxon, I think, a gen¬ 
uine dative-with-infinitive construction: the dative depends on the chief verb, 
and the infinitive is subject thereto. This conclusion is rendered the more 
1 Cf. Tatian 185.23: guot ist uns kir zi wesanne = bonum est nobis kic esse (from Denecke, l. c., p. 71). 
2 Streitberg, 2 1. c., p. 213. 
3 See Miklosick, 1 1. c., p. 494, and Jolly, l. c., p. 269; also Vondrak, l. c., II, pp. 366-368, 420-422. Pro¬ 
fessor C. D. Buck, of tke University of Ckicago, kindly called my attention to tke grammar by Vondrak. 
