Three remarkable infinitives

Fossilisation of Passive in English: Analysis of Passive Verbs

“…Section 4.3): the reflexive construction can turn into the passive once the subject's control is lost. As demonstrated in (36)- (38), cloister tends to appear with the reflexive, but even in the example from the nineteenth century, i.e. (38), the subject control is still firmly preserved.…”

“…As demonstrated in (36)- (38), cloister tends to appear with the reflexive, but even in the example from the nineteenth century, i.e. (38), the subject control is still firmly preserved. Therefore, what is special about this verb is only the tendency to appear with the reflexive pronoun, not its development into the passive.…”

“…In the earlier active use there were occurrences of reflexive pronouns. This was particularly common with cloister, as in (36)- (38), but one instance can be found in repute, as in (39). These examples are typical cases of the reflexive, in the sense that the clause involves two participants and the subject's thematic role is agent and the undergoer's, patient, and these two participants refer to the same entity, known as archetypal reflexive content.…”

“…As far as the examples in (36)- (39) are concerned, there does not seem to be a loss of the subject's control. For example, consider (38): this is taken from 1854, and recall Table 1, which states the date when cloister lost its active use as around the eighteenth-nineteenth century. So (38) above is one of the last instances of the active use and it still retains the subject control.…”

“…For example, consider (38): this is taken from 1854, and recall Table 1, which states the date when cloister lost its active use as around the eighteenth-nineteenth century. So (38) above is one of the last instances of the active use and it still retains the subject control. However, English in general does not use the reflexive pronoun frequently, and the frequent use of such a grammatical item in a special set of verbs like the passive verbs should be noted.…”