THE OBJECTIVE INFINITIVE. 
233 
with datival verbs and verbal phrases:— Hel. 975: uuest thu, that us so 
girisid allaro rehto gihuuilig te gifulleanne; 1 ib. 3138: god is it her te uuesanne. 2 
In the following the uninflected infinitive may be considered as subject or as 
predicate nominative: Hel. 5825: ik uuet that is iu ist niud sehan an theson 
stene innan. 3 
It seems probable, therefore, that the use of the infinitive, whether unin¬ 
flected or inflected, as the subject of active verbs, is of native origin in the Ger¬ 
manic languages; and that the differentiation between the two infinitives is 
much the same as in Anglo-Saxon: often the datival verbs or verbal phrases 
cause the inflected (or in Gothic the prepositional) infinitive to be used as sub¬ 
ject instead of the uninflected. 
The passive infinitive as subject, as, indeed, the passive infinitive in any 
use, is very rare in the earlier Germanic languages. Concerning the passive 
infinitive in general, we know that in Gothic the passive infinitive of the Greek 
is usually rendered by an active infinitive; that, while the passive infinitive is 
not infrequent in some Old High German translations, as in the Benedictiner- 
Regel , in the better translations it is often avoided, and that in the more original 
prose it is almost unknown, only two examples (with an auxiliary) occurring 
in Otfrid; that the passive infinitive is not frequent in Old Saxon or in Old 
Norse. The situation, therefore, in the Germanic languages as a whole as 
regards the passive infinitive is strikingly similar to that found in Anglo-Saxon. 
See Denecke, l. c., p. 5; Pratje, l. c., pp. 78, 80; Streitberg, 2 Z. c., § 312; Wil- 
manns, Z. c., p. 165; Falk and Torp, Z. c., p. 194; Kahle, Z. c., § 432; Loffler, 
Z. c.j pp. 10—11; Oberg, Z. c., pp. 24-25. 
II. THE OBJECTIVE INFINITIVE. 
It is clearly out of the question at this place to do much more than call 
attention to a few of the most striking instances of the interchange of unin¬ 
flected infinitive and of inflected infinitive as object in the Germanic languages 
other than Anglo-Saxon. 
As in Anglo-Saxon, so in the other Germanic languages the object infinitive 
is very common with verbs (1) of commanding, (2) of causing and permitting, 
and (3) of sense perception, as may be seen by a brief inspection of the treatises 
named for the respective languages at the beginning of this chapter. It is far 
less common with other groups of verbs. 
According to the statistics of Dr. A. Kohler, there is next to no interchange 
of simple infinitive and of prepositional infinitive as object in Gothic. True, a 
few verbs that he discusses under the objective use 4 ( giban , saihvan, meljan, 
anabiudan , sokjan) are followed by both the simple infinitive and the preposi¬ 
tional infinitive, but each time he holds that the prepositional infinitive is final, 
not objective, in which supposition he is usually correct As, however, we 
saw the same sort of wavering between the two infinitives in the Anglo-Saxon 
cognates, beodan and secan, I cite an example each of anabiudan and of sok¬ 
jan followed by the prepositional infinitive: L. 4.10: patei aggilum seinaim 
1 From Steig, l. c., p. 493. 2 Ibidem, l. c., p. 496. 
3 Ibidem, l. c., p. 344. Steig, however, considers that sehan modifies niud . See p. 264 below. 
* Kohler, 2 A., 1. c., pp. 435-450. 
