This paper addresses the issue of the historical development of for fear (that) in English – a prepositional subordinator ushering in fi nite clauses of purpose in which negation is inherently coded, i.e. the content of the subordinate clause is negated by the complementiser which does not contain a negative particle in itself. The rise of this construction is studied within the theory of grammaticalization and it turns out to be a regular case of grammaticalization following the mechanisms of grammaticalization such as desemanticisation, extension and decategorialisation.

The aim of this article is to examine the development and status of LEST – the most common subordinator introducing negative purpose clauses in Middle English. After presenting the relevant nomenclature of the subject and the etymology of the original structure, I analyse different meanings of LEST, i.e. avertive, in-case, apprehensive and apprehensional epistemic functions as well as its structural development throughout the Middle English period. The data for this study are drawn primarily from the Penn-Helsinki Parsed Corpus of Middle English because of the chronological order of the texts included which should enable tracing potential developments of the studied expression.

This paper addresses the issue of the development of FOR DREAD THAT – a negative purpose subordinator in the history of the English language. The theoretical foundation of this work are the mechanisms of grammaticalisation suggested by Heine and Kuteva in many works of theirs. The gathered material shows that the development of this relatively rarely used subordinator constitutes a case of a typical grammaticalisation whose rise might have been the result of analogy with FOR FEAR THAT.