A study of developmental process of infinitive : From purposive to infinitive - a universal path of grammaticization

부정사의 발전 과정에 관한 연구 -문법화의 보편적인 통로로서의 목적에서 부정사로-

This paper describes the evolution of the infinitive in terms of its progressive formal and semantic grammaticization, using the German infinitive as an example. It is shown that the infinitive has its diachronic origin in a nominal purposive form and that the grammaticization of a purposive form to an infinitive is a widespread phenomenon in the languages of the world. This original function of the infinitive is important for understanding its nature, and the most interesting syntactic property of infinitive, the absence of an explicit subject, can be shown to follow from it. Finally, this paper shows that the diachronic process of the grammaticization of a purposive form is even more general, occurring also in the case of purposive markers in finite clauses.