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This chapter argues that to in Old English is semantically occupying the same niche as the subjunctive ending (or, for Present-day English, the modal verb that has taken over the subjunctive function) and should be accommodated in the functional projection that accommodates the subjunctive ending and, later, the modals, say T(ense). This in effect means that there has been no change in the syntactic status of to since it stopped being a preposition in prehistoric times. In early Middle English, split infinitives become possible, a change triggered by the fact that the finite subjunctive was increasingly coming to be expressed by a free form (a modal verb) raising to T overtly, rather than by a bound form (a subjunctive ending), raising to T covertly. The overt movement of to brought it in line with the rest of its paradigm: the modal verbs.

Full-on communications and half-on intimations are both overt. A kind of intimation that combines the overt and covert is now introduced, whose underlying form is ‘I want you to know that I do not want you to know that I want you to know’. Instances of such intimation in social life are common, often conditioned by politeness or self-protectiveness. The focus of the chapter, however, is on showing that the same pattern applies to the intimations that storytellers make to their audiences in the established narrative arts. Stories are overt about being pretences, since we know they are fictional; they are a mixture of covert and overt, however, when it comes to how they captivate their audience. Audiences must be made to lose themselves in the dramatically convincing story while still knowing the plot for the contrivance that it is. This achievement is the author’s overarching contrivance.

The chapter argues against a ‘conversational’ model of the relation between storyteller and audience, on the grounds that it puts the storyteller at too little distance from the audience. Although more overt than intimation at the half-on position (since the transmission is required to come across by recognition of the intention of the transmitting party), the storyteller’s intimation still lacks the complete overtness of full-on communication (since that recognition is only partial); hence its ‘three-quarters-on’ position. Contrast the full covertness of the quarter-on position, whose underlying form is: I want you to know (something), but I also want you not to know that I want you to know (that thing). Lyric poetry, which comes alive for us by masking its own artificiality, belongs here. A derivation is then proposed that makes mimicry fundamental to storytelling’s manner of intimation, rendering theoretical appeal to make-believe, imagination, or the authorial ‘persona’ unnecessary.