This article investigates the history of so-called permissive subjects in English, for example The tent sleeps four: inanimate, non-agentive subjects used with verbs that normally take animate, agentive subjects. Although permissive subjects are assumed in the literature to be innovations, there is little information available on their use and frequency. Using historical corpora, I provide an account of the history of permissive subjects with five verbs – see, buy, seat, sleep and sell. The results show that permissive subjects with see and buy are already found in the sixteenth century, while those with seat and sell occur from the nineteenth century onwards, and those with sleep first occur in the twentieth century. The five types also differ in other respects, with genre and functional motivations playing an important role. Crucially, there is an increase in the overall use of these permissive subjects, which follows the increase in subject-initial clauses and a more marked use of the presubject position as described by Los & Dreschler (2012), supporting their proposal that several subject-creating strategies – passives, middles and permissive subjects – became more frequent in English due to changes in the pragmatic character of the clause-initial position, in turn caused by the loss of verb second.

中文翻译：

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“五十英镑可以给我买一匹马作为我的马车”：英语宽容科目的历史

本文调查了英语中所谓的许可主题的历史，例如帐篷睡四个: 无生命的、非能动的主语，与通常采用有生命的能动主语的动词一起使用。尽管在文献中假设许可主题是创新，但很少有关于它们的使用和频率的信息。使用历史语料库，我用五个动词来描述许可主题的历史——看,买,座位,睡觉和卖。结果表明，宽容的受试者看和买早在 16 世纪就已经发现，而那些座位和卖发生在十九世纪以后，那些有睡觉最早出现在二十世纪。这五种类型在其他方面也有所不同，类型和功能动机起着重要作用。至关重要的是，随着 Los & Dreschler (2012) 所描述的主语开头从句的增加和前置主语位置的更显着使用，这些许可主语的总体使用有所增加，支持他们的提议，即几个主语-由于从句-初始位置的语用特征发生变化，进而导致动词 second 的丢失，创造策略——被动语态、中间语和许可主语——在英语中变得更加频繁。