I`m told

[Larry Trask]

----------------------------Original message----------------------------
The construction in which an indirect object is raised to become the
subject of a passive has been called the `indirect passive'.  There
is a historical study of the rise of this construction in English in
chapter 6 of the following book:
 
David Denison (1993), English Historical Syntax, London: Longman.
 
Briefly, Denison reports that the indirect passive was unknown in Old
English, that the first apparent examples appear in the early 13th
century with certain verbs like `DO (somebody) good' and `LET
(somebody) blood', that the first reasonably clear examples with
verbs like GIVE and TELL appear in the late 14th century, and that
these remained rare until the late 15th century, after which the
construction spread to more and more verbs and became frequent.
 
Documentation of the rise and spread of this construction is provided
in sections 1967-1975 of F. Th. Visser (1963-1973), An Historical
Syntax of the English Language, 4 vols., Leiden: E. J. Brill.  Both
Visser and Denison caution that the early examples are often somewhat
doubtful and need to be interpreted cautiously.
 
Larry Trask
COGS
University of Sussex
Brighton BN1 9QH
England
 
larryt at cogs.susx.ac.uk