bare infinitives and to-infinitives in the history of German
What is it about?
In Modern German, there are some verbs (like sehen 'to see') that are constructed with bare infinitive (ich sah ihn die Treppe hinunterlaufen 'I saw him run down the stairs'). Other verbs like bitten 'to ask for' are constructed with to-infinitive (ich bat ihn, die Treppe hinunterzulaufen 'I asked him to run down the stairs'). The structure of these constructions is identical, in both cases there are two constituents, the accusative 'him', that functions as logical subject to the verb 'run down', and the rest of the infinitival clause. If the structures are identical, why do they use two different infinitival formsa? The answer is: In earlier stages of German, they did in fact not use different forms, the distribution of bare infinitive and to-infinitive was semantically governed. The modern 'division-of-labor' grew out of these semantic distinctions.