The purpose of this paper is to verify the hypothesis of the Great Complement Shift (GCS), according to which infinitival complement is being replaced by prepositional gerund over time. The advance of the to plus gerund (to-gerund) is considered to be the most prominent pattern of GCS (Rudanko 2010, etc.). On the basis of the Corpus of Historical American English, this paper examines the frequency changes from the 1820s to the 2000s involving eight predicates expected to have undergone GCS. It turns out that object and confine have completed the change in the early twentieth century and only to-gerund is used now. The predicates consent, prone and look forward have partially undergone GCS: among them look forward is in the front line and to-gerund overtook to-infinitive in the 1850s and have since spread rapidly; with consent and prone, to-infinitive is still used more frequently but to-gerund is increasing and to-infinitive is slightly decreasing over time. The verbs agree, assent and aspire differ from the others in that to-infinitive has not decreased at all. Since to-gerund is slightly increasing with these verbs, GCS is still justified but not at the expense of to-infinitive.

Pil - Hw an Lee . 2002 . On the Dev elopment of Eng lish Infinitiv al Cons tructions . S t ud ie s in M od e rn Gram ma r 27, 77- 104 . This is an explanation for the development of the three infinitival constructions which were introduced into English roughly at the same time during the Middle English period, i.e., the so- called Accusitiv cum Infinitivo (or exceptional case-marking ) construction, the f or NP to V construction, and the passive infinitivals . There have been various accounts for the introduction of these constructions . The traditional accounts are synt actic borrowing from Latin and analogical extension. However, Fischer (1988, 1989, 1990, 1991, 1992a, 1992b, 1994) criticizes such accounts, saying that the introduction was due to grammar - internal factors, expecially to the word order change English underwent in this period. It is argued in this article that the loss of inflectional endings is a more important internal change than the word order change. The argument is that the reanalysis, by which new infinitival constructions appeared, was due to the loss of inflectional ending (especially, dative ending ) of the sandwiched NP between the main verb and the infinitive. Furthermore, there is a general agreement that the word order change in English was it self due to the loss of inflectional endings. In this respect , the loss of the inflectional endings is a more basic and important factor for the changes of English Infinitival constructions .