“The Complements of Causative make in Late Middle English”

The dataset of this study derives from ICAMET. While in contemporary English causative make is followed by bare infinitives, it was commonly accompanied by to-infinitives in the past. This study shows how extensively to-infinitives are used with causative make in Late Middle English, where the distinction in the constructions in the active and passive voices was not at all clear. Apparently, other factors were more relevant to the choice between the two types of infinitives as the complement of causative make in Middle English.

Related publication(s)

• Iyeiri, Yoko. 2018. “Causative Make and its Infinitival Complements in Early Modern English”, in Explorations in English Historical Syntax, ed. Hubert Cuyckens, Hendrik De Smet, Liesbet Heyvaert and Charlotte Maekelberghe, pp. 139-157. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.