THE INFINITIVE WITH ADJECTIVES. 
217 
He then quotes a few examples of the inflected infinitive translating a Latin 
gerund or gerundive after sellan, and adds this note: “The presence or 
absence of ad may have been to some extent a determinant of the use or 
omission of to.” These statements by Professor Shearin, however, are, as is 
evident from our statistics just given, far too restricted, being made solely with 
reference to the inflected infinitive after sellan , whereas the former statement 
is true of all verbs. As to the second statement, the absence of ad, in gerund 
or gerundive constructions, has next to no weight in bringing about the omis¬ 
sion of to, as an inspection of our statistics will show. Dr. Shearin does not 
express any opinion as to the origin of the final infinitive in Anglo-Saxon after 
the other groups of verbs further than to cite (p. 17) with approbation Grimm’s 
statement as to the origin of the inflected infinitive in general: “ Anfangs 
verstarkte die prap. in gewissen fallen den infinitivischen ausdruck: iddja du 
saian sagt etwas mehr als das blosse iddja saian.” 1 Dr. T. J. Farrar, in his 
The Gerund in Old English, p. 36, explicitly declines to discuss the origin of the 
construction in Anglo-Saxon; nor have I found any helpful comment in any 
of the other treatises on Anglo-Saxon syntax accessible to me. 
In the other Germanic languages the origin of the final infinitive was prob¬ 
ably the same as in Anglo-Saxon: see Chapter XVI, section x. 
XI. THE INFINITIVE WITH ADJECTIVES. 2 
The inflected infinitive with adjectives seems to be a construction of native 
origin in Anglo-Saxon, because: — 
1. It is found not infrequently in the poetry, occurring in Beowulf (4 times) 
as well as in the poems known to be based on Latin originals. 
2. In the translations it corresponds to various Latin idioms, and not a few 
times occurs without any Latin correspondents. 
The Latin correspondents are: an adjective with a preposition + a gerund in the accusa¬ 
tive (11) or + a gerundive in the accusative (15); an adjective with a gerund (genitive, 4; 
dative, 1); an adjective with a preposition -f- a gerund in the ablative, 1; a verb + a gerund 
in the dative, 2; an adverb + a gerund in the ablative, 1; an adjective with a prepositional 
phrase (6), or a supine in -u (2), or a noun in the ablative (3), or an infinitive (8); an infinitive 
(subjective, 1; objective, 4; predicative with an auxiliary, 3; as a predicate nominative, 1); 
an accusative and passive infinitive as subject, 3; an indicative (active, 3; passive, 3); a 
subjunctive (active, 1; passive, 2); an imperative, 2; a noun in the nominative, 1; an adjec¬ 
tive (attributive, 1; predicative, 8); a participle (attributive, passive, 1; appositive, active, 
4); a gerundial periphrastic, passive, 1; a loose paraphrase, 3; no Latin, 21. 
3. It occurs, though not frequently, in the Chronicle, in the Laws, and in 
Wulfstan. 
But, while the construction is doubtless of native origin, and is analogous 
to the modification of an adjective by any other prepositional-adverbial phrase, 
the use of the idiom has doubtless been somewhat increased by the Latin 
original, especially by the frequency of the construction made up of gerund 
and gerundive just mentioned. And it is possible that, in the few examples 
in which the inflected infinitive is clearly genitival in function (as in Boeth. 
50.10, 24 a * b ; 51.9), the idiom is an imitation of the Latin gerund in the genitive. 
The construction of the adjective with an uninflected infinitive occurs only 
1 Grimm, l. c., IV, p. 121, 
2 See Chapter XI, p. 149. 
