The Verb-Phrase Auxiliary+Infinitive: Evidence of Orality in the Epistolary Genre?

This paper deals with WO in the VP ‘Auxiliary Verb + Dependent Infinitive’. Firstly, the order ‘Aux.+Inf.’ is shown to be an ‘informal’ linguistic feature, which mostly surfaces in texts that might be viewed as participating in a kind of ‘orality’, either ‘conceptional’ and/or ‘compositional’. Secondly, some letters by Ambrose of Milan and Jerome of Stridon are taken into consideration, in order to observe which order prevails and attempt to explain why. The epistolary genre seems a promising field for such an investigation, in that letters are usually viewed – by ancient authors and modern scholars – as approaching the character of oral discourse. Data lead us to contrast Ambrose’s variability in WO with Jerome’s prominence of informal order, and are accounted for also in the light of the two writers’ compositional habits: namely Ambrose’s autography versus Jerome’s dictation.