The role of the accessibility of the subject in the development of adjectival complementation from Old English to Present-day Eng

This article investigates the role of the accessibility of subjects in the development of extraposed complements depending on deontic adjectives, such as it is important to honour those who have done honour to us (CB). Throughout history, these mandative constructions have patterned with both that- and to-complements, whose distribution changed over time. It is shown that, from the rise of the to-clauses at the expense of the that-clauses in Middle English onwards, these two types of complement start to differ in terms of accessibility of the subject, with to-clauses attracting subjects with more accessible reference. Accessibility of subjects therefore appears to have been a factor in the rise of the to-infinitive in mandative extraposition constructions. Interestingly, this general trend was temporarily reversed in the Early and Late Modern English data due to a combination of constructional, informational and stylistic factors.