THE PREDICATIVE INFINITIVE WITH DATIVE SUBJECT. 
129 
probable, not only for Anglo-Saxon but also for Gothic, I believe, by the similar 
development in Old High German, especially after gilimphan, concerning 
which see Chapter XVI, section ix. 
Moreover, this interpretation of the dative with the infinitive in Anglo- 
Saxon tallies, so far as I have been able to discover, with that given of the 
dative with the infinitive in Latin. In Allen and Greenough’s Latin Grammar, 
§ 272, a. 1, we read: “ With certain impersonal verbs and expressions that take 
the infinitive as an apparent subject (§ 270. b), the personal subject of the 
action may be expressed (1) by a dative depending on the verb or verbal 
phrase or (2) by an accusative expressed as the subject of the infinitive. Thus: 
rogant ut id sibi facere liceat (B.G. i. 7), ‘they ask that it be allowed them to do 
this; 1 — si licet 1 * * 4 vivere eum quern Sex. Naevius non volt (Quinct. 94), ‘ if it is 
allowed a man to live against the will of Sextus Naevius (whom S. N. does not 
wish).’ ” The phrase, “ the dative with an infinitive,” occurs in but few of the 
Latin grammars that I have consulted, and, when it does occur, is employed, 
as in the Allen and Greenough Latin Grammar, to designate a dative that is 
governed by the finite verb and an infinitive that is the subject thereof. No¬ 
where have I found a claim, implicit or explicit, that the Latin infinitive in 
such locutions is genuinely predicative. 
It will have been observed that, in some of the Anglo-Saxon examples above 
given, we have sometimes a dative and an uninflected infinitive, sometimes a 
dative and an inflected infinitive, and sometimes with the same verb a dative 
and both an inflected infinitive and an uninflected infinitive. This interchange 
of uninflected and of inflected infinitives has already been explained in the 
consideration of the Subjective Infinitive, Chapter I, pp. 20-26 above, under 
which head, as already implied, I have put all of the above examples. Here 
it remains only to add that, regardless of our attitude to the so-called dative- 
with-infinitive construction, our explanation of the interchange between the 
uninflected and the inflected subjective infinitives is strengthened, if not con¬ 
firmed, by the Miklosich theory of the dative with infinitive in the Slavic 
languages. 
So far as I have been able to discover, the phrase, “ the dative with infini¬ 
tive,” in the sense assigned to it by Grimm, is confined in the grammars to the 
dative with infinitive after impersonal verbs, as illustrated in the preceding 
section of this chapter. But, if the phrase is to be used at all, I do not see 
why it should not be used with reference, also, to the dative after certain per¬ 
sonal verbs. Note, for example, how close to the accusative with infinitive 
after permitto in the Latin Mat. 8.21 (Domine, permitte me primum ire, et 
sepelire patrem meum = Drihten, alyfe me serest to farenne and bebyrigean 
(sic!) minne fseder) is the dative with infinitive after the same verb in Luke 
9.59 ( permitte mihi primum ire, et sepelire patrem meum = alyf me seryst beby¬ 
rigean minne fseder), at least as close, in my judgment, as is the dative with 
infinitive after the impersonal, licet, to the accusative with infinitive after the 
same, in the passages quoted above. In Anglo-Saxon, too, we have an unin- 
i According to Zumpt, l. c., § 601, licet is more frequently followed by a dative with an infinitive than by 
an accusative with an infinitive. I have found no clear example in Anglo-Saxon of aliefan, * to be allowable,’ 
4 to allow,’ followed by an accusative with an infinitive; but gebyrian ‘ to happen,’ * to be fitting,’ and gedafenian, 
4 to be fitting,’ are followed by both the accusative with an infinitive and the dative with an infinitive. —■ 
M. C., Jr. 
