On the relationship between the lexical-grammatical category of the verb form and the syntactic category of verbal control

Sokolova Alina, Fedurko Yulia

the article presents the results of a study devoted to the identification and comparison of grammatical functions of infinitive forms in old English and middle English. In the course of the research, evidence-based conclusions were made, confirmed by numerous examples, about the functioning of one of the forms of the infinitive within the category of the verb form in old English. The combination of a personal verb with a non-inflectional infinitive in old English is considered by the authors as one of the ways to Express the limit – the aspectual category of the old English verb. An equivalent way to convey the limit is to use the direct complement with the verb in the accusative case. This article is devoted to one of the aspects discovered in the course of research – the relationship of the lexical and grammatical category of the verb form with the syntactic category of verbal control. The existence of this relationship confirms the authors ' conclusion that language is an interconnected system of mutually defining units, and changes in each individual element of this system caused by extralinguistic factors lead to changes in other elements. The system-centric approach underlying the study allows us to trace the relationship between the decay of the case system and the simplification of the type category in the English verb.

Keywords:history of the English language; category of species; limit / atelicity of the verb; verbal control; infinitive.