The emergence of adverbial infinitives in Swedish

Prepositional infinitives are commonly used in present-day Swedish to express a range of adverbial notions, including purposive, abessive, substitutive, temporal, and instrumental meanings. However, only purposive infinitives are attested in Old Swedish. The aim of this article is to give an account of the emergence of adverbial infinitives in the history of Swedish. Other adverbial infinitives emerged from the late 17th century onwards, possibly as a result of contact-induced (replica) grammaticalization. It is furthermore argued that the emergence of adverbial infinitives should be seen as a result of the increasing importance and consequent demands for precision of the written language, and as part of the establishing of a written norm, separate from the spoken language. This assumption is supported by data from the traditional dialect of Övdalian, where adverbial infinitives are not used.