Split infinitive
Encyclopedia
A split infinitive is an English-language
grammatical
construction in which a word or phrase, usually an adverb
or adverbial
phrase, comes between the marker to and the bare infinitive (uninflected) form of a verb
.
For example, a split infinitive occurs in the opening sequence of the Star Trek
television series: to boldly go where no man has gone before
. Here, the adverb "boldly" splits the full infinitive "to go". More rarely, the term compound split infinitive is used to describe situations in which the infinitive is split by more than one word: The population is expected to more than double in the next ten years.
As the split infinitive became more common in the 19th century, some grammatical authorities sought to introduce a prescriptive
rule against it. The construction is still the subject of disagreement among native English speakers as to whether it is grammatically correct or good style: "No other grammatical issue has so divided English speakers since the split infinitive was declared to be a solecism
in the 19c [19th century]: raise the subject of English usage in any conversation today and it is sure to be mentioned". However, most modern English usage guides have dropped the objection to the split infinitive.
, infinitives were single words ending in -n or -an (compare modern Dutch
and German
-n, -en). Gerund
s were formed using "to" followed by a verbal noun in the dative case
, which ended in -anne or -enne (e.g. tō cumenne = "coming, to come"). In Middle English
, the bare infinitive and the gerund coalesced into the same form ending in -(e)n (e.g. comen "come"; to comen "to come"). The "to" infinitive was not split in Old or Early Middle English.
The first known example of a split infinitive in English, in which a pronoun rather than an adverb splits the infinitive, is in Layamon
's Brut
(early 13th century):
This may be a poetic inversion for the sake of meter, and therefore says little about whether Layamon would have felt the construction to be syntactically natural. However, no such reservation applies to the following prose example from John Wycliffe
(14th century), who was fond of splitting infinitives:
, the construction became rare in the 15th and 16th centuries. William Shakespeare
used only one, and it is a special case as it is clearly a syntactical inversion for the sake of rhyme:
Edmund Spenser
, John Dryden
, Alexander Pope
, and the King James Version of the Bible
used none, and they are very rare in the writing of Samuel Johnson
. John Donne
used them several times, though, and Samuel Pepys
also used at least one. No reason for the near disappearance of the split infinitive is known; in particular, no prohibition is recorded.
Split infinitives reappeared in the 18th century and became more common in the 19th.
Daniel Defoe
, Benjamin Franklin
, William Wordsworth
, Abraham Lincoln
, George Eliot
, Henry James
, and Willa Cather
are among the writers who used them. Examples in the poems of Robert Burns
attest its presence also in 18th century Scots:
However, it was especially in colloquial use that the construction experienced a veritable boom. Today, according to the American Heritage Book of English Usage, "people split infinitives all the time without giving it a thought". In corpora of contemporary spoken English, some adverbs such as always and completely appear more often in the split position than the unsplit.
writes: "If the adverb should immediately precede the finite verb, we feel that it should immediately precede also the infinitive…" Thus if one says:
one may, by analogy, wish to say:
This is supported by the fact that split infinitives are often used as echoes, as in the following exchange, in which the riposte parodies the slightly odd collocation in the original sentence:
Here is an example of an adverb being transferred into split infinitive position from a parallel position in a different construction.
ians have attributed the construction to a re-analysis of the role of to.
Sometimes it is a negation, as in the self-referential joke:
However, in modern colloquial English almost any adverb may be found in this syntactic position, especially when the adverb and the verb form a close syntactic unit (really-pull, not-split).
Compound split infinitives, splitting by more than one word, usually involve a pair of adverbs or a multi-word adverbial:
Examples of non-adverbial elements participating in the split-infinitive construction seem rarer in Modern English than in Middle English. The pronoun all commonly appears in this position:
and may even be combined with an adverb:
This is an extension of the subject pronoun (you all). However an object pronoun, as in the Layamon example above, would be unusual in modern English, perhaps because this might cause a listener to misunderstand the to as a preposition:
Other parts of speech would be very unusual in this position. However, in verse, poetic inversion for the sake of meter or of bringing a rhyme word to the end of a line often results in abnormal syntax, as with Shakespeare's split infinitive (to pitied be, cited above), in fact an inverted passive construction in which the infinitive is split by a past participle. Presumably, this would not have occurred in a prose text by the same author.
, the earliest use of the term split infinitive on record dates from 1897, with infinitive-splitting and infinitive-splitter following in 1926 and 1927 respectively. The now rare cleft infinitive is slightly older, attested from 1893. The term compound split infinitive is not found in these dictionaries and appears to be very recent.
This terminology implies analysing the full infinitive as a two-word infinitive, which not all grammarians accept. As one who used "infinitive" to mean the single-word verb, Otto Jespersen
challenged the epithet: "'To' is no more an essential part of an infinitive than the definite article is an essential part of a nominative, and no one would think of calling 'the good man' a 'split nominative'." However, no alternative terminology has been proposed.
times, and frequently the 18th century scholar Robert Lowth
is cited as the originator of the prescriptive rule, such a rule is not to be found in Lowth's writing and is not known to appear in any other text prior to the mid-19th century.
Possibly the earliest comment against split infinitives was by an anonymous American in 1834:
In 1840, Richard Taylor also condemned split infinitives as a "disagreeable affectation", and in 1859, Solomon Barrett, Jr., called them "a common fault". However, the issue seems not to have attracted wider public attention until Henry Alford
addressed it in his Plea for the Queen's English in 1864:
Others quickly followed, among them Bache, 1869 ("The to of the infinitive mood is inseparable from the verb"); William B. Hodgson, 1889; and Raub, 1897 ("The sign to must not be separated from the remaining part of the infinitive by an intervening word").
Even as these authorities were condemning the split infinitive, others were endorsing it: Brown, 1851 (saying some grammarians had criticized it and it was less elegant than other adverb placements but sometimes clearer); Hall, 1882; Onions, 1904; Jespersen, 1905; Fowler and Fowler, 1906. Despite the defence by some grammarians, by the beginning of the 20th century the prohibition was firmly established in the press and popular belief. In the 1907 edition of The King's English, the Fowler
brothers wrote:
In large parts of the school system, the construction was opposed with ruthless vigour. A correspondent to the BBC
on a programme about English grammar in 1983 remarked:
As a result, the debate took on a degree of passion which the bare facts of the matter never warranted. There was frequent skirmishing between the splitters and anti-splitters until the 1960s. George Bernard Shaw
wrote letters to newspapers supporting writers who used the split infinitive, and Raymond Chandler
complained to the editor of The Atlantic Monthly
about a proofreader
who changed Chandler's split infinitives:
Post-1960 authorities show a strong tendency to accept the split infinitive. Follett, in Modern American Usage (1966) writes: "The split infinitive has its place in good composition. It should be used when it is expressive and well led up to." Fowler (Gower's revised second edition, 1983) offers the following example of the consequences of refusal to split infinitives: "The greatest difficulty about assessing the economic achievements of the Soviet Union is that its spokesmen try absurdly to exaggerate them; in consequence the visitor may tend badly to underrate them" (italics added). This question results: "Has dread of the split infinitive led the writer to attach the adverbs ['absurdly' and 'badly'] to the wrong verbs, and would he not have done better to boldly split both infinitives, since he cannot put the adverbs after them without spoiling his rhythm" (italics added)? Bernstein (1985) argues that, although infinitives should not always be split, they should be split where doing so improves the sentence: "The natural position for a modifier is before the word it modifies. Thus the natural position for an adverb modifying an infinitive should be just . . . after the to" (italics added). Bernstein continues: "Curme's contention that the split infinitive is often an improvement . . . cannot be disputed." Heffernan and Lincoln, in their modern English composition textbook, agree with the above authors. Some sentences, they write, "are weakened by . . . cumbersome splitting," but in other sentences "an infinitive may be split by a one-word modifier that would be awkward in any other position."
does not have the construction advising against its use on the grounds that it is not the norm. In principle this is a respectable position, but as the construction grows in popularity, its viability is progressively reduced.
Many of those who avoid split infinitives differentiate according to type and register. Infinitives split by multi-word phrases ("compound split infinitives") and those split by pronouns are demonstrably less usual than the straightforward example of an infinitive split by an adverb. Likewise, split infinitives are far more common in speech than in, say, academic writing. Thus, while an outright rejection of the split infinitive is no longer sustainable on descriptive grounds (as it was in 1834), the advice to avoid it in formal settings, and to avoid some types in particular, remains a tenable position. The prescriptive rule of thumb draws on the descriptive observation that certain split infinitives are not usual in certain situations.
The to in the infinitive construction, which is found throughout the Germanic languages, is originally a preposition before the dative of a verbal noun, but in the modern languages it is widely regarded as a particle which serves as a marker of the infinitive. In German, this marker (zu) sometimes precedes the infinitive, but is not regarded as part of it. In English, on the other hand, it is traditional to speak of the "bare infinitive" without to and the "full infinitive" with it, and to conceive of to as part of the full infinitive. (In the sentence "I made my daughter clean her room," clean is a bare infinitive; in "She decided to clean her room", to clean is a full infinitive.) Possibly this is because the absence of an inflected infinitive form made it useful to include the particle in the citation form of the verb, and in some nominal constructions in which other Germanic languages would omit it (e.g. to know her is to love her). The concept of a two-word infinitive can reinforce an intuitive sense that the two words belong together. For instance, the rhetorician John Duncan Quackenbos said, "To have is as much one thing, and as inseparable by modifiers, as the original form habban, or the Latin
habere." The usage writer John Opdycke based a similar argument on the closest French, German, and Latin translations.
The two-part infinitive is disputed, however, and some linguists would say that the infinitive in English is also a single-word verb form, which may or may not be preceded by the particle to. Some modern generative
analysts classify to as a "peculiar" auxiliary verb
; other analysts, as the infinitival subordinator. Moreover, even when the concept of the full infinitive is accepted, it does not necessarily follow that any two words that belong together grammatically need be adjacent to each other. They usually are, but counter-examples are easily found, such as an adverb splitting a two-word finite verb ("will not do", "has not done").
. An infinitive in Latin is never used with a marker equivalent to English to, and thus there is no parallel there for the construction. The claim that those who dislike split infinitives are applying rules of Latin grammar to English is asserted in many references that accept the split infinitive. One example is in the American Heritage Book of English Usage: "The only rationale for condemning the construction is based on a false analogy with Latin." In more detail, the usage author Marilyn Moriarty states:
The assertion is also made in the Oxford Guide to Plain English, Compact Oxford English Dictionary, and Steven Pinker
’s Language Instinct
, among other sources.
The argument implies an adherence to the humanist idea of the greater purity of the classics, which particularly in Renaissance times led people to regard aspects of English which differed from Latin as inferior. However by the 19th century such views were no longer widespread; Moriarty is in error about the age of the prohibition. It has also been stated that an argument from Latin would be fallacious because "there is no precedent in these languages for condemning the split infinitive because in Greek and Latin (and all the other romance languages) the infinitive is a single word that is impossible to sever."
However, this is something of a straw man argument
as very few proponents of the rule argue from Latin in any case. Certainly, it is clear that dislike of the split infinitive does not originate from Latin. As shown above, none of the prescriptivists who started the split-infinitive controversy in the 19th century mentioned Latin in connection with it. Occasionally teachers and bloggers can be found who do oppose the split infinitive with such an argument, but it is not found in any statements of the position from the 19th or early 20th century, when the prohibition developed. Of the writers cited here (and the many others consulted) who ascribe the split-infinitive prohibition to Latinism, none cite an authority who condemned the construction on that basis. According to Richard Bailey, the prohibition does not come from a comparison with Latin, and the belief that it does is “part of the folklore of linguistics.”
's Grammar of the English Language (1931) says that not only is the split infinitive correct, but it "should be furthered rather than censured, for it makes for clearer expression". The Columbia
Guide to Standard American English
notes that the split infinitive "eliminates all possibility of ambiguity
", in contrast to the "potential for confusion" in an unsplit construction. Merriam Webster's Dictionary of English Usage
says, "there has never been a rational
basis for objecting to the split infinitive." According to Mignon Fogarty
, "today almost everyone agrees that it is OK to split infinitives".
Nevertheless, many teachers of English still admonish students against using split infinitives in writing. Because the prohibition has become so widely known, the Columbia Guide recommends that writers "follow the conservative path [of avoiding split infinitives when they are not necessary], especially when you're uncertain of your readers' expectations and sensitivities in this matter." Likewise, the Oxford Dictionaries do not regard the split infinitive as ungrammatical, but on balance consider it likely to produce a weak style and advise against its use for formal correspondence. R. W. Burchfield's revision of Fowler's Modern English Usage goes farther (quoting Burchfield's own 1981 book The Spoken Word): "Avoid splitting infinitives whenever possible, but do not suffer undue remorse if a split infinitive is unavoidable for the completion of a sentence already begun."
As well as register, tolerance of split infinitives varies according to type. While most authorities accept split infinitives in general, it is not hard to construct an example which any native speaker would reject. Interestingly, Wycliff's Middle English compound split would, if transferred to modern English, be regarded by most people as un-English:
Attempts to define the boundaries of normality are controversial. In 1996, the usage panel of The American Heritage Book was evenly divided for and against such sentences as,
but more than three-quarters of the panel rejected
Here the problem appears to be the breaking up of the verbal phrase to be seeking a plan to relieve: a segment of the head verbal phrase is so far removed from the remainder that the listener or reader must expend greater effort to understand the sentence. By contrast, 87 percent of the panel deemed acceptable the multi-word adverbial in
not surprisingly perhaps, because here there is no other place to put the words more than without substantially recasting the sentence.
Splitting infinitives with negation
s remains an area of contention:
Even those who are generally tolerant of split infinitives may draw the line at these. This appears to be because the traditional idiom, placing the negation before the marker (I soon learned not to provoke her) or with verbs of desire, negating the finite verb (I don't want to see you anymore) remains easy and natural, and is still overwhelmingly the more common construction. Some argue that the two forms have different meanings, while others see a grammatical difference.
In some cases, moving the adverbial creates an ungrammatical sentence or changes the meaning. R.L. Trask
uses this example:
The sentence can be rewritten to maintain its meaning, however, by using a noun or a different grammatical aspect
of the verb, or by eschewing the informal "get rid":
Fowler notes that the option of rewriting is always available but questions whether it is always worth the trouble.
English language
English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...
grammatical
Grammar
In linguistics, grammar is the set of structural rules that govern the composition of clauses, phrases, and words in any given natural language. The term refers also to the study of such rules, and this field includes morphology, syntax, and phonology, often complemented by phonetics, semantics,...
construction in which a word or phrase, usually an adverb
Adverb
An adverb is a part of speech that modifies verbs or any part of speech other than a noun . Adverbs can modify verbs, adjectives , clauses, sentences, and other adverbs....
or adverbial
Adverbial
In grammar an adverbial is a word or a group of words that modifies or tells us something about the sentence or the verb. The word adverbial is also used as an adjective, meaning 'having the same function as an adverb'...
phrase, comes between the marker to and the bare infinitive (uninflected) form of a verb
Verb
A verb, from the Latin verbum meaning word, is a word that in syntax conveys an action , or a state of being . In the usual description of English, the basic form, with or without the particle to, is the infinitive...
.
For example, a split infinitive occurs in the opening sequence of the Star Trek
Star Trek
Star Trek is an American science fiction entertainment franchise created by Gene Roddenberry. The core of Star Trek is its six television series: The Original Series, The Animated Series, The Next Generation, Deep Space Nine, Voyager, and Enterprise...
television series: to boldly go where no man has gone before
Where no man has gone before
"Where no man has gone before" is a phrase originally made popular through its use in the title sequence of most episodes of the original Star Trek science fiction television series. It refers to the mission of the original starship Enterprise...
. Here, the adverb "boldly" splits the full infinitive "to go". More rarely, the term compound split infinitive is used to describe situations in which the infinitive is split by more than one word: The population is expected to more than double in the next ten years.
As the split infinitive became more common in the 19th century, some grammatical authorities sought to introduce a prescriptive
Linguistic prescription
In linguistics, prescription denotes normative practices on such aspects of language use as spelling, grammar, pronunciation, and syntax. It includes judgments on what usages are socially proper and politically correct...
rule against it. The construction is still the subject of disagreement among native English speakers as to whether it is grammatically correct or good style: "No other grammatical issue has so divided English speakers since the split infinitive was declared to be a solecism
Solecism
In traditional prescriptive grammar, a solecism is something perceived as a grammatical mistake or absurdity, or even a simply non-standard usage. The word was originally used by the Greeks for what they perceived as mistakes in their language...
in the 19c [19th century]: raise the subject of English usage in any conversation today and it is sure to be mentioned". However, most modern English usage guides have dropped the objection to the split infinitive.
Middle English
In Old EnglishOld English language
Old English or Anglo-Saxon is an early form of the English language that was spoken and written by the Anglo-Saxons and their descendants in parts of what are now England and southeastern Scotland between at least the mid-5th century and the mid-12th century...
, infinitives were single words ending in -n or -an (compare modern Dutch
Dutch language
Dutch is a West Germanic language and the native language of the majority of the population of the Netherlands, Belgium, and Suriname, the three member states of the Dutch Language Union. Most speakers live in the European Union, where it is a first language for about 23 million and a second...
and German
German language
German is a West Germanic language, related to and classified alongside English and Dutch. With an estimated 90 – 98 million native speakers, German is one of the world's major languages and is the most widely-spoken first language in the European Union....
-n, -en). Gerund
Gerund
In linguistics* As applied to English, it refers to the usage of a verb as a noun ....
s were formed using "to" followed by a verbal noun in the dative case
Dative case
The dative case is a grammatical case generally used to indicate the noun to whom something is given, as in "George gave Jamie a drink"....
, which ended in -anne or -enne (e.g. tō cumenne = "coming, to come"). In Middle English
Middle English
Middle English is the stage in the history of the English language during the High and Late Middle Ages, or roughly during the four centuries between the late 11th and the late 15th century....
, the bare infinitive and the gerund coalesced into the same form ending in -(e)n (e.g. comen "come"; to comen "to come"). The "to" infinitive was not split in Old or Early Middle English.
The first known example of a split infinitive in English, in which a pronoun rather than an adverb splits the infinitive, is in Layamon
Layamon
Layamon or Laghamon (ˈlaɣamon; in American English often modernised as ; ), occasionally written Lawman, was a poet of the early 13th century and author of the Brut, a notable English poem of the 12th century that was the first English language work to discuss the legends of Arthur and the...
's Brut
Brut (Layamon)
Layamon's Brut , also known as The Chronicle of Britain, is a Middle English poem compiled and recast by the English priest Layamon. The Brut is 16,095 lines long and narrates the history of Britain: it is the first historiography written in English since the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle...
(early 13th century):
- and he cleopede him to; alle his wise cnihtes.
- for to him reade;
- And he called to him all his wise knights / to him advise.
This may be a poetic inversion for the sake of meter, and therefore says little about whether Layamon would have felt the construction to be syntactically natural. However, no such reservation applies to the following prose example from John Wycliffe
John Wycliffe
John Wycliffe was an English Scholastic philosopher, theologian, lay preacher, translator, reformer and university teacher who was known as an early dissident in the Roman Catholic Church during the 14th century. His followers were known as Lollards, a somewhat rebellious movement, which preached...
(14th century), who was fond of splitting infinitives:
- For this was gret unkyndenesse, to this manere treten there brother.
- For this was great unkindness, to in this manner treat their brother.
Modern English
After its rise in Middle EnglishMiddle English
Middle English is the stage in the history of the English language during the High and Late Middle Ages, or roughly during the four centuries between the late 11th and the late 15th century....
, the construction became rare in the 15th and 16th centuries. William Shakespeare
William Shakespeare
William Shakespeare was an English poet and playwright, widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's national poet and the "Bard of Avon"...
used only one, and it is a special case as it is clearly a syntactical inversion for the sake of rhyme:
- Root pity in thy heart, that when it grows
- Thy pity may deserve to pitied be (Sonnet 142Sonnet 142-Interpretations:*Sylvia Syms, for the 2002 compilation album, When Love Speaks...
).
Edmund Spenser
Edmund Spenser
Edmund Spenser was an English poet best known for The Faerie Queene, an epic poem and fantastical allegory celebrating the Tudor dynasty and Elizabeth I. He is recognised as one of the premier craftsmen of Modern English verse in its infancy, and one of the greatest poets in the English...
, John Dryden
John Dryden
John Dryden was an influential English poet, literary critic, translator, and playwright who dominated the literary life of Restoration England to such a point that the period came to be known in literary circles as the Age of Dryden.Walter Scott called him "Glorious John." He was made Poet...
, Alexander Pope
Alexander Pope
Alexander Pope was an 18th-century English poet, best known for his satirical verse and for his translation of Homer. He is the third-most frequently quoted writer in The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations, after Shakespeare and Tennyson...
, and the King James Version of the Bible
King James Version of the Bible
The Authorized Version, commonly known as the King James Version, King James Bible or KJV, is an English translation of the Christian Bible by the Church of England begun in 1604 and completed in 1611...
used none, and they are very rare in the writing of Samuel Johnson
Samuel Johnson
Samuel Johnson , often referred to as Dr. Johnson, was an English author who made lasting contributions to English literature as a poet, essayist, moralist, literary critic, biographer, editor and lexicographer...
. John Donne
John Donne
John Donne 31 March 1631), English poet, satirist, lawyer, and priest, is now considered the preeminent representative of the metaphysical poets. His works are notable for their strong and sensual style and include sonnets, love poetry, religious poems, Latin translations, epigrams, elegies, songs,...
used them several times, though, and Samuel Pepys
Samuel Pepys
Samuel Pepys FRS, MP, JP, was an English naval administrator and Member of Parliament who is now most famous for the diary he kept for a decade while still a relatively young man...
also used at least one. No reason for the near disappearance of the split infinitive is known; in particular, no prohibition is recorded.
Split infinitives reappeared in the 18th century and became more common in the 19th.
Daniel Defoe
Daniel Defoe
Daniel Defoe , born Daniel Foe, was an English trader, writer, journalist, and pamphleteer, who gained fame for his novel Robinson Crusoe. Defoe is notable for being one of the earliest proponents of the novel, as he helped to popularise the form in Britain and along with others such as Richardson,...
, Benjamin Franklin
Benjamin Franklin
Dr. Benjamin Franklin was one of the Founding Fathers of the United States. A noted polymath, Franklin was a leading author, printer, political theorist, politician, postmaster, scientist, musician, inventor, satirist, civic activist, statesman, and diplomat...
, William Wordsworth
William Wordsworth
William Wordsworth was a major English Romantic poet who, with Samuel Taylor Coleridge, helped to launch the Romantic Age in English literature with the 1798 joint publication Lyrical Ballads....
, Abraham Lincoln
Abraham Lincoln
Abraham Lincoln was the 16th President of the United States, serving from March 1861 until his assassination in April 1865. He successfully led his country through a great constitutional, military and moral crisis – the American Civil War – preserving the Union, while ending slavery, and...
, George Eliot
George Eliot
Mary Anne Evans , better known by her pen name George Eliot, was an English novelist, journalist and translator, and one of the leading writers of the Victorian era...
, Henry James
Henry James
Henry James, OM was an American-born writer, regarded as one of the key figures of 19th-century literary realism. He was the son of Henry James, Sr., a clergyman, and the brother of philosopher and psychologist William James and diarist Alice James....
, and Willa Cather
Willa Cather
Willa Seibert Cather was an American author who achieved recognition for her novels of frontier life on the Great Plains, in works such as O Pioneers!, My Ántonia, and The Song of the Lark. In 1923 she was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for One of Ours , a novel set during World War I...
are among the writers who used them. Examples in the poems of Robert Burns
Robert Burns
Robert Burns was a Scottish poet and a lyricist. He is widely regarded as the national poet of Scotland, and is celebrated worldwide...
attest its presence also in 18th century Scots:
- Who dared to nobly stem tyrannic pride. ("The Cottar's Saturday Night")
However, it was especially in colloquial use that the construction experienced a veritable boom. Today, according to the American Heritage Book of English Usage, "people split infinitives all the time without giving it a thought". In corpora of contemporary spoken English, some adverbs such as always and completely appear more often in the split position than the unsplit.
Theories of origins
Although it is difficult to say why the construction developed in Middle English, or why it revived so powerfully in Modern English, a number of theories have been postulated.Analogy
Traditional grammarians have suggested that the construction appeared because people frequently place adverbs before finite verbs. George CurmeGeorge Oliver Curme
George Oliver Curme, Sr. was an American grammarian and philologist. He is best known for his Grammar of the German Language , andA Grammar of the English Language ....
writes: "If the adverb should immediately precede the finite verb, we feel that it should immediately precede also the infinitive…" Thus if one says:
- She gradually got rid of her teddy bears. and
- She will gradually get rid of her teddy bears.
one may, by analogy, wish to say:
- She wants to gradually get rid of her teddy bears.
This is supported by the fact that split infinitives are often used as echoes, as in the following exchange, in which the riposte parodies the slightly odd collocation in the original sentence:
- Child: I accidentally forgot to feed the hamster.
- Parent: Well, you'll have to try harder not to "accidentally forget," won't you?
Here is an example of an adverb being transferred into split infinitive position from a parallel position in a different construction.
Transformational grammar
Transformational grammarTransformational grammar
In linguistics, a transformational grammar or transformational-generative grammar is a generative grammar, especially of a natural language, that has been developed in the Chomskyan tradition of phrase structure grammars...
ians have attributed the construction to a re-analysis of the role of to.
Types
In the modern language, splitting usually involves a single adverb coming between the verb and its marker. Very frequently, this is an emphatic adverb, for example:- I need you all to really pull your weight.
- I'm gonna totally pulverise him. (gon-na = going to)
Sometimes it is a negation, as in the self-referential joke:
- Writers should learn to not split infinitives.
However, in modern colloquial English almost any adverb may be found in this syntactic position, especially when the adverb and the verb form a close syntactic unit (really-pull, not-split).
Compound split infinitives, splitting by more than one word, usually involve a pair of adverbs or a multi-word adverbial:
- We are determined to completely and utterly eradicate the disease.
- He is thought to almost never have made such a gesture before.
- This is a great opportunity to once again communicate our basic message.
Examples of non-adverbial elements participating in the split-infinitive construction seem rarer in Modern English than in Middle English. The pronoun all commonly appears in this position:
- It was their nature to all hurt one another.
and may even be combined with an adverb:
- I need you to all really pull your weight.
This is an extension of the subject pronoun (you all). However an object pronoun, as in the Layamon example above, would be unusual in modern English, perhaps because this might cause a listener to misunderstand the to as a preposition:
- *And he called to him all his wise knights to him advise.
Other parts of speech would be very unusual in this position. However, in verse, poetic inversion for the sake of meter or of bringing a rhyme word to the end of a line often results in abnormal syntax, as with Shakespeare's split infinitive (to pitied be, cited above), in fact an inverted passive construction in which the infinitive is split by a past participle. Presumably, this would not have occurred in a prose text by the same author.
History of the term
It was not until the very end of the 19th century that terminology emerged to describe the construction. According to the main etymological dictionariesEtymological dictionary
An etymological dictionary discusses the etymology of the words listed. Often, large dictionaries, such as the OED and Webster's, will contain some etymological information, without aspiring to focus on etymology....
, the earliest use of the term split infinitive on record dates from 1897, with infinitive-splitting and infinitive-splitter following in 1926 and 1927 respectively. The now rare cleft infinitive is slightly older, attested from 1893. The term compound split infinitive is not found in these dictionaries and appears to be very recent.
This terminology implies analysing the full infinitive as a two-word infinitive, which not all grammarians accept. As one who used "infinitive" to mean the single-word verb, Otto Jespersen
Otto Jespersen
Jens Otto Harry Jespersen or Otto Jespersen was a Danish linguist who specialized in the grammar of the English language.He was born in Randers in northern Jutland and attended Copenhagen University, earning degrees in English, French, and Latin...
challenged the epithet: "'To' is no more an essential part of an infinitive than the definite article is an essential part of a nominative, and no one would think of calling 'the good man' a 'split nominative'." However, no alternative terminology has been proposed.
History of the controversy
Although it is sometimes reported that a prohibition on split infinitives goes back to RenaissanceRenaissance
The Renaissance was a cultural movement that spanned roughly the 14th to the 17th century, beginning in Italy in the Late Middle Ages and later spreading to the rest of Europe. The term is also used more loosely to refer to the historical era, but since the changes of the Renaissance were not...
times, and frequently the 18th century scholar Robert Lowth
Robert Lowth
Robert Lowth FRS was a Bishop of the Church of England, Oxford Professor of Poetry and the author of one of the most influential textbooks of English grammar.-Life:...
is cited as the originator of the prescriptive rule, such a rule is not to be found in Lowth's writing and is not known to appear in any other text prior to the mid-19th century.
Possibly the earliest comment against split infinitives was by an anonymous American in 1834:
I am not conscious, that any rule has been heretofore given in relation to this point […] The practice, however, of not separating the particle from its verb, is so general and uniform among good authors, and the exceptions are so rare, that the rule which I am about to propose will, I believe, prove to be as accurate as most rules, and may be found beneficial to inexperienced writers. It is this :—The particle, TO, which comes before the verb in the infinitive mode, must not be separated from it by the intervention of an adverb or any other word or phrase; but the adverb should immediately precede the particle, or immediately follow the verb.
In 1840, Richard Taylor also condemned split infinitives as a "disagreeable affectation", and in 1859, Solomon Barrett, Jr., called them "a common fault". However, the issue seems not to have attracted wider public attention until Henry Alford
Henry Alford
Henry Alford was an English churchman, theologian, textual critic, scholar, poet, hymnodist, and writer.-Life:...
addressed it in his Plea for the Queen's English in 1864:
But surely, this is a practice entirely unknown to English speakers and writers. It seems to me that we ever regard the to of the infinitive as inseparable from its verb. And, when we have already a choice between two forms of expression, 'scientifically to illustrate' and 'to illustrate scientifically,' there seems no good reason for flying in the face of common usage.
Others quickly followed, among them Bache, 1869 ("The to of the infinitive mood is inseparable from the verb"); William B. Hodgson, 1889; and Raub, 1897 ("The sign to must not be separated from the remaining part of the infinitive by an intervening word").
Even as these authorities were condemning the split infinitive, others were endorsing it: Brown, 1851 (saying some grammarians had criticized it and it was less elegant than other adverb placements but sometimes clearer); Hall, 1882; Onions, 1904; Jespersen, 1905; Fowler and Fowler, 1906. Despite the defence by some grammarians, by the beginning of the 20th century the prohibition was firmly established in the press and popular belief. In the 1907 edition of The King's English, the Fowler
Henry Watson Fowler
Henry Watson Fowler was an English schoolmaster, lexicographer and commentator on the usage of the English language...
brothers wrote:
- "The 'split' infinitive has taken such hold upon the consciences of journalists that, instead of warning the novice against splitting his infinitives, we must warn him against the curious superstition that the splitting or not splitting makes the difference between a good and a bad writer."
In large parts of the school system, the construction was opposed with ruthless vigour. A correspondent to the BBC
BBC
The British Broadcasting Corporation is a British public service broadcaster. Its headquarters is at Broadcasting House in the City of Westminster, London. It is the largest broadcaster in the world, with about 23,000 staff...
on a programme about English grammar in 1983 remarked:
- "One reason why the older generation feel so strongly about English grammar is that we were severely punished if we didn't obey the rules! One split infinitive, one whack; two split infinitives, two whacks; and so on."
As a result, the debate took on a degree of passion which the bare facts of the matter never warranted. There was frequent skirmishing between the splitters and anti-splitters until the 1960s. George Bernard Shaw
George Bernard Shaw
George Bernard Shaw was an Irish playwright and a co-founder of the London School of Economics. Although his first profitable writing was music and literary criticism, in which capacity he wrote many highly articulate pieces of journalism, his main talent was for drama, and he wrote more than 60...
wrote letters to newspapers supporting writers who used the split infinitive, and Raymond Chandler
Raymond Chandler
Raymond Thornton Chandler was an American novelist and screenwriter.In 1932, at age forty-five, Raymond Chandler decided to become a detective fiction writer after losing his job as an oil company executive during the Depression. His first short story, "Blackmailers Don't Shoot", was published in...
complained to the editor of The Atlantic Monthly
The Atlantic Monthly
The Atlantic is an American magazine founded in Boston, Massachusetts, in 1857. It was created as a literary and cultural commentary magazine. It quickly achieved a national reputation, which it held for more than a century. It was important for recognizing and publishing new writers and poets,...
about a proofreader
Proofreading
Proofreading is the reading of a galley proof or computer monitor to detect and correct production-errors of text or art. Proofreaders are expected to be consistently accurate by default because they occupy the last stage of typographic production before publication.-Traditional method:A proof is...
who changed Chandler's split infinitives:
- "By the way, would you convey my compliments to the purist who reads your proofs and tell him or her that I write in a sort of broken-down patois which is something like the way a Swiss-waiter talks, and that when I split an infinitive, God damn it, I split it so it will remain split, and when I interrupt the velvety smoothness of my more or less literate syntax with a few sudden words of barroom vernacular, this is done with the eyes wide open and the mind relaxed and attentive. The method may not be perfect, but it is all I have."
Post-1960 authorities show a strong tendency to accept the split infinitive. Follett, in Modern American Usage (1966) writes: "The split infinitive has its place in good composition. It should be used when it is expressive and well led up to." Fowler (Gower's revised second edition, 1983) offers the following example of the consequences of refusal to split infinitives: "The greatest difficulty about assessing the economic achievements of the Soviet Union is that its spokesmen try absurdly to exaggerate them; in consequence the visitor may tend badly to underrate them" (italics added). This question results: "Has dread of the split infinitive led the writer to attach the adverbs ['absurdly' and 'badly'] to the wrong verbs, and would he not have done better to boldly split both infinitives, since he cannot put the adverbs after them without spoiling his rhythm" (italics added)? Bernstein (1985) argues that, although infinitives should not always be split, they should be split where doing so improves the sentence: "The natural position for a modifier is before the word it modifies. Thus the natural position for an adverb modifying an infinitive should be just . . . after the to" (italics added). Bernstein continues: "Curme's contention that the split infinitive is often an improvement . . . cannot be disputed." Heffernan and Lincoln, in their modern English composition textbook, agree with the above authors. Some sentences, they write, "are weakened by . . . cumbersome splitting," but in other sentences "an infinitive may be split by a one-word modifier that would be awkward in any other position."
Principal objections to the split infinitive
Objections to the split infinitive fall into three categories, of which only the first is accorded any credence by linguists.The descriptivist objection
Like most linguistic prescription, disapproval of the split infinitive was originally based on the descriptive observation that it was not in fact a feature of the prestige form of English which those proscribing it wished to champion. This is made explicit in the anonymous 1834 text, the first known statement of the position, and in Alford's objection in 1864, the first truly influential objection to the construction, both cited above. Still today, many English speakers avoid split infinitives not because they follow a prescriptive rule, but simply because it was not part of the language that they learned as children. Thus the descriptivist objection involves a person whose idiolectIdiolect
In linguistics, an idiolect is a variety of a language unique to an individual. It is manifested by patterns of vocabulary or idiom selection , grammar, or pronunciations that are unique to the individual. Every individual's language production is in some sense unique...
does not have the construction advising against its use on the grounds that it is not the norm. In principle this is a respectable position, but as the construction grows in popularity, its viability is progressively reduced.
Many of those who avoid split infinitives differentiate according to type and register. Infinitives split by multi-word phrases ("compound split infinitives") and those split by pronouns are demonstrably less usual than the straightforward example of an infinitive split by an adverb. Likewise, split infinitives are far more common in speech than in, say, academic writing. Thus, while an outright rejection of the split infinitive is no longer sustainable on descriptive grounds (as it was in 1834), the advice to avoid it in formal settings, and to avoid some types in particular, remains a tenable position. The prescriptive rule of thumb draws on the descriptive observation that certain split infinitives are not usual in certain situations.
The argument from the full infinitive
A second argument is summed up by Alford's statement "It seems to me that we ever regard the to of the infinitive as inseparable from its verb".The to in the infinitive construction, which is found throughout the Germanic languages, is originally a preposition before the dative of a verbal noun, but in the modern languages it is widely regarded as a particle which serves as a marker of the infinitive. In German, this marker (zu) sometimes precedes the infinitive, but is not regarded as part of it. In English, on the other hand, it is traditional to speak of the "bare infinitive" without to and the "full infinitive" with it, and to conceive of to as part of the full infinitive. (In the sentence "I made my daughter clean her room," clean is a bare infinitive; in "She decided to clean her room", to clean is a full infinitive.) Possibly this is because the absence of an inflected infinitive form made it useful to include the particle in the citation form of the verb, and in some nominal constructions in which other Germanic languages would omit it (e.g. to know her is to love her). The concept of a two-word infinitive can reinforce an intuitive sense that the two words belong together. For instance, the rhetorician John Duncan Quackenbos said, "To have is as much one thing, and as inseparable by modifiers, as the original form habban, or the Latin
Latin
Latin is an Italic language originally spoken in Latium and Ancient Rome. It, along with most European languages, is a descendant of the ancient Proto-Indo-European language. Although it is considered a dead language, a number of scholars and members of the Christian clergy speak it fluently, and...
habere." The usage writer John Opdycke based a similar argument on the closest French, German, and Latin translations.
The two-part infinitive is disputed, however, and some linguists would say that the infinitive in English is also a single-word verb form, which may or may not be preceded by the particle to. Some modern generative
Generative grammar
In theoretical linguistics, generative grammar refers to a particular approach to the study of syntax. A generative grammar of a language attempts to give a set of rules that will correctly predict which combinations of words will form grammatical sentences...
analysts classify to as a "peculiar" auxiliary verb
Auxiliary verb
In linguistics, an auxiliary verb is a verb that gives further semantic or syntactic information about a main or full verb. In English, the extra meaning provided by an auxiliary verb alters the basic meaning of the main verb to make it have one or more of the following functions: passive voice,...
; other analysts, as the infinitival subordinator. Moreover, even when the concept of the full infinitive is accepted, it does not necessarily follow that any two words that belong together grammatically need be adjacent to each other. They usually are, but counter-examples are easily found, such as an adverb splitting a two-word finite verb ("will not do", "has not done").
The argument from classical languages
A frequently discussed argument states that the split-infinitive prohibition is based on LatinLatin
Latin is an Italic language originally spoken in Latium and Ancient Rome. It, along with most European languages, is a descendant of the ancient Proto-Indo-European language. Although it is considered a dead language, a number of scholars and members of the Christian clergy speak it fluently, and...
. An infinitive in Latin is never used with a marker equivalent to English to, and thus there is no parallel there for the construction. The claim that those who dislike split infinitives are applying rules of Latin grammar to English is asserted in many references that accept the split infinitive. One example is in the American Heritage Book of English Usage: "The only rationale for condemning the construction is based on a false analogy with Latin." In more detail, the usage author Marilyn Moriarty states:
The rule forbidding a split infinitive comes from the time when Latin was the universal language of the world. All scholarly, respectable writing was done in Latin. Scientists and scholars even took Latin names to show that they were learned. In Latin, infinitives appear as a single word. The rule which prohibits splitting an infinite [sic] shows deference to Latin and to the time when the rules which governed Latin grammar were applied to other languages.
The assertion is also made in the Oxford Guide to Plain English, Compact Oxford English Dictionary, and Steven Pinker
Steven Pinker
Steven Arthur Pinker is a Canadian-American experimental psychologist, cognitive scientist, linguist and popular science author...
’s Language Instinct
The Language Instinct
The Language Instinct is a book by Steven Pinker for a general audience, published in 1994. In it, Pinker argues that humans are born with an innate capacity for language. In addition, he deals sympathetically with Noam Chomsky's claim that all human language shows evidence of a universal grammar...
, among other sources.
The argument implies an adherence to the humanist idea of the greater purity of the classics, which particularly in Renaissance times led people to regard aspects of English which differed from Latin as inferior. However by the 19th century such views were no longer widespread; Moriarty is in error about the age of the prohibition. It has also been stated that an argument from Latin would be fallacious because "there is no precedent in these languages for condemning the split infinitive because in Greek and Latin (and all the other romance languages) the infinitive is a single word that is impossible to sever."
However, this is something of a straw man argument
Straw man
A straw man is a component of an argument and is an informal fallacy based on misrepresentation of an opponent's position, twisting his words or by means of [false] assumptions...
as very few proponents of the rule argue from Latin in any case. Certainly, it is clear that dislike of the split infinitive does not originate from Latin. As shown above, none of the prescriptivists who started the split-infinitive controversy in the 19th century mentioned Latin in connection with it. Occasionally teachers and bloggers can be found who do oppose the split infinitive with such an argument, but it is not found in any statements of the position from the 19th or early 20th century, when the prohibition developed. Of the writers cited here (and the many others consulted) who ascribe the split-infinitive prohibition to Latinism, none cite an authority who condemned the construction on that basis. According to Richard Bailey, the prohibition does not come from a comparison with Latin, and the belief that it does is “part of the folklore of linguistics.”
Current views
Present style and usage manuals deem simple split infinitives unobjectionable in many situations. For example, CurmeGeorge Oliver Curme
George Oliver Curme, Sr. was an American grammarian and philologist. He is best known for his Grammar of the German Language , andA Grammar of the English Language ....
's Grammar of the English Language (1931) says that not only is the split infinitive correct, but it "should be furthered rather than censured, for it makes for clearer expression". The Columbia
Columbia University
Columbia University in the City of New York is a private, Ivy League university in Manhattan, New York City. Columbia is the oldest institution of higher learning in the state of New York, the fifth oldest in the United States, and one of the country's nine Colonial Colleges founded before the...
Guide to Standard American English
American English
American English is a set of dialects of the English language used mostly in the United States. Approximately two-thirds of the world's native speakers of English live in the United States....
notes that the split infinitive "eliminates all possibility of ambiguity
Ambiguity
Ambiguity of words or phrases is the ability to express more than one interpretation. It is distinct from vagueness, which is a statement about the lack of precision contained or available in the information.Context may play a role in resolving ambiguity...
", in contrast to the "potential for confusion" in an unsplit construction. Merriam Webster's Dictionary of English Usage
Merriam Webster's Dictionary of English Usage
Merriam–Webster's Dictionary of English Usage is a usage dictionary published by Merriam-Webster, Inc., of Springfield, Massachusetts. It is currently available in a reprint edition ISBN 0-87779-132-5 or ISBN 978-0877791324. Merriam–Webster's Dictionary of English Usage is a usage...
says, "there has never been a rational
Rationality
In philosophy, rationality is the exercise of reason. It is the manner in which people derive conclusions when considering things deliberately. It also refers to the conformity of one's beliefs with one's reasons for belief, or with one's actions with one's reasons for action...
basis for objecting to the split infinitive." According to Mignon Fogarty
Mignon Fogarty
Mignon Fogarty is a former science writer who produces an educational podcast Grammar Girl's Quick and Dirty Tips for Better Writing, which promotes the proper use of the English language and was named one of the best podcasts of 2007 by iTunes. She is also the founder of the Quick and Dirty Tips...
, "today almost everyone agrees that it is OK to split infinitives".
Nevertheless, many teachers of English still admonish students against using split infinitives in writing. Because the prohibition has become so widely known, the Columbia Guide recommends that writers "follow the conservative path [of avoiding split infinitives when they are not necessary], especially when you're uncertain of your readers' expectations and sensitivities in this matter." Likewise, the Oxford Dictionaries do not regard the split infinitive as ungrammatical, but on balance consider it likely to produce a weak style and advise against its use for formal correspondence. R. W. Burchfield's revision of Fowler's Modern English Usage goes farther (quoting Burchfield's own 1981 book The Spoken Word): "Avoid splitting infinitives whenever possible, but do not suffer undue remorse if a split infinitive is unavoidable for the completion of a sentence already begun."
As well as register, tolerance of split infinitives varies according to type. While most authorities accept split infinitives in general, it is not hard to construct an example which any native speaker would reject. Interestingly, Wycliff's Middle English compound split would, if transferred to modern English, be regarded by most people as un-English:
- *It was most unkind to in this manner treat their brother.
Attempts to define the boundaries of normality are controversial. In 1996, the usage panel of The American Heritage Book was evenly divided for and against such sentences as,
- I expect him to completely and utterly fail
but more than three-quarters of the panel rejected
- We are seeking a plan to gradually, systematically, and economically relieve the burden.
Here the problem appears to be the breaking up of the verbal phrase to be seeking a plan to relieve: a segment of the head verbal phrase is so far removed from the remainder that the listener or reader must expend greater effort to understand the sentence. By contrast, 87 percent of the panel deemed acceptable the multi-word adverbial in
- We expect our output to more than double in a year
not surprisingly perhaps, because here there is no other place to put the words more than without substantially recasting the sentence.
Splitting infinitives with negation
Negation
In logic and mathematics, negation, also called logical complement, is an operation on propositions, truth values, or semantic values more generally. Intuitively, the negation of a proposition is true when that proposition is false, and vice versa. In classical logic negation is normally identified...
s remains an area of contention:
- I want to not see you anymore.
- I soon learned to not provoke her.
Even those who are generally tolerant of split infinitives may draw the line at these. This appears to be because the traditional idiom, placing the negation before the marker (I soon learned not to provoke her) or with verbs of desire, negating the finite verb (I don't want to see you anymore) remains easy and natural, and is still overwhelmingly the more common construction. Some argue that the two forms have different meanings, while others see a grammatical difference.
Avoiding split infinitives
Writers who avoid splitting infinitives either place the splitting element elsewhere in the sentence (as noted in the 1834 proscription) or reformulate the sentence, perhaps rephrasing it without an infinitive and thus avoiding the issue. Considering that many English speakers throughout history have not known the construction, or have known it only passively, there can be no situation in which it is a necessary part of natural speech. However, a sentence with a split infinitive such as "to more than double" must be completely rewritten; it is ungrammatical to put the words "more than" anywhere else in the sentence. While split infinitives can be avoided, a writer must be careful not to produce an awkward or ambiguous sentence. Fowler (1926) stressed that, if a sentence is to be rewritten to remove a split infinitive, this must be done without compromising the language:It is of no avail merely to fling oneself desperately out of temptation; one must so do it that no traces of the struggle remain; that is, sentences must be thoroughly remodelled instead of having a word lifted from its original place & dumped elsewhere:...
In some cases, moving the adverbial creates an ungrammatical sentence or changes the meaning. R.L. Trask
Larry Trask
Robert Lawrence "Larry" Trask was Professor of Linguistics at the University of Sussex and an authority on the Basque language and historical linguistics....
uses this example:
- She decided to gradually get rid of the teddy bears she had collected.
-
- "Gradually" splits the infinitive "to get". However, if the adverb were moved, where could it go?
- She decided gradually to get rid of the teddy bears she had collected.
-
- This might imply that the decision was gradual.
- She decided to get rid of the teddy bears she had collected gradually.
-
- This implies that the collecting process was gradual.
- She decided to get gradually rid of the teddy bears she had collected.
-
- This sounds awkward, as it splits the phrase "get rid of".
- She decided to get rid gradually of the teddy bears she had collected.
-
- This is almost as unwieldy as its immediate predecessor.
The sentence can be rewritten to maintain its meaning, however, by using a noun or a different grammatical aspect
Grammatical aspect
In linguistics, the grammatical aspect of a verb is a grammatical category that defines the temporal flow in a given action, event, or state, from the point of view of the speaker...
of the verb, or by eschewing the informal "get rid":
- She decided to get rid of her teddy bear collection gradually.
- She decided she would gradually get rid of the teddy bears she had collected.
- She decided to rid herself gradually of the teddy bears she had collected.
Fowler notes that the option of rewriting is always available but questions whether it is always worth the trouble.
Popular culture
- The split infinitive, specifically its famous use in the Star TrekStar TrekStar Trek is an American science fiction entertainment franchise created by Gene Roddenberry. The core of Star Trek is its six television series: The Original Series, The Animated Series, The Next Generation, Deep Space Nine, Voyager, and Enterprise...
opening sequence, is the basis of a joke from Douglas AdamsDouglas AdamsDouglas Noel Adams was an English writer and dramatist. He is best known as the author of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, which started life in 1978 as a BBC radio comedy before developing into a "trilogy" of five books that sold over 15 million copies in his lifetime, a television...
' The Hitchhiker's Guide to the GalaxyThe Hitchhiker's Guide to the GalaxyThe Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy is a science fiction comedy series created by Douglas Adams. Originally a radio comedy broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in 1978, it was later adapted to other formats, and over several years it gradually became an international multi-media phenomenon...
: "In those days men were real men, women were real women, small furry creatures from Alpha CentauriAlpha CentauriAlpha Centauri is the brightest star in the southern constellation of Centaurus...
were real small furry creatures from Alpha Centauri. And all dared to brave unknown terrors, to do mighty deeds, to boldly split infinitives that no man had split before - and thus was the Empire forged." - In the film Quiz ShowQuiz ShowQuiz Show is a 1994 American historical drama film produced and directed by Robert Redford. Adapted by Paul Attanasio from Richard Goodwin's memoir Remembering America, the film is based upon the Twenty One quiz show scandal of the 1950s...
, Charles Van DorenCharles Van DorenCharles Lincoln Van Doren is an American intellectual, writer, and editor who was involved in a television quiz show scandal in the 1950s...
looks at a legal document and says, "Oh, there's a split infinitive here in the second paragraph." - Split infinitives are an annoyance to Inspector Fowler (Rowan AtkinsonRowan AtkinsonRowan Sebastian Atkinson is a British actor, comedian, and screenwriter. He is most famous for his work on the satirical sketch comedy show Not The Nine O'Clock News, and the sitcoms Blackadder, Mr. Bean and The Thin Blue Line...
), the main character of the British comedy series The Thin Blue LineThe Thin Blue Line (TV series)The Thin Blue Line is a British sitcom starring Rowan Atkinson set in a police station that ran for two series on the BBC from 1995 to 1996...
. He corrects Constable Goodie for using the famous Star Trek split infinitive only to be chided by his son later in the episode for splitting one himself. - Numerous P. G. WodehouseP. G. WodehouseSir Pelham Grenville Wodehouse, KBE was an English humorist, whose body of work includes novels, short stories, plays, poems, song lyrics, and numerous pieces of journalism. He enjoyed enormous popular success during a career that lasted more than seventy years and his many writings continue to be...
characters show the tendency to split infinitives, and other characters, who pride themselves upon being purists, detest this. For example, in The Swoop!, the young hero says triumphantly to his prisoner—a German prince with excellent English—"it is when apparently crushed that the Briton is to more than ever be feared". Even in this dire situation, the prince insists that the protagonist has used bad grammar by splitting an infinitive and has thus spoiled his big speech. - In the television comedy FrasierFrasierFrasier is an American sitcom that was broadcast on NBC for eleven seasons, from September 16, 1993, to May 13, 2004. The program was created and produced by David Angell, Peter Casey, and David Lee in association with Grammnet and Paramount Network Television.A spin-off of Cheers, Frasier stars...
, the episode "The Unnatural" shows Frasier Crane warning his son against splitting infinitives. - In the criminal comedy-drama series PsychPsychPsych is an American detective comedy-drama television series created by Steve Franks and broadcast on USA Network. It stars James Roday as Shawn Spencer, a young crime consultant for the Santa Barbara Police Department whose "heightened observational skills" and impressive detective instincts...
, season 3 episode 5 ("Disco Didn't Die. It Was Murdered!"), Shawn and Gus question the way Chief Karen Vick speaks. She then says "Well, why don't you tell me how to properly say this? ...", to which Gus replies "You split an infinitive." - In the television series Gilmore GirlsGilmore GirlsGilmore Girls is an American family comedy-drama series created by Amy Sherman-Palladino, starring Lauren Graham and Alexis Bledel. On October 5, 2000, the series debuted on The WB and was cancelled in its seventh season, ending on May 15, 2007 on The CW...
, season 6 episode 12 (Just Like Gwen and Gavin) Paris Geller, in her role as editor of the Yale Daily News, berates a journalist working on an article when he uses a split infinitive. - In the movie The Crush (1993 film), Adrienne, played by Alicia SilverstoneAlicia SilverstoneAlicia Silverstone is an American actress, author, and former fashion model. She first came to widespread attention in music videos for Aerosmith, and is perhaps best known for her roles in Hollywood films such as Clueless and her portrayal of Batgirl in Batman & Robin .-Early life:Silverstone...
, jokingly chastises Nick, played by Cary ElwesCary ElwesIvan Simon Cary Elwes , known professionally as Cary Elwes, is an English actor. The son of Dominick Elwes and Tessa Georgina Kennedy, Elwes acted in off-Broadway plays during college and moved to the United States in the early 1980s. He is known for his role as Westley in the cult classic The...
, that his "split infitives put such a stress on the adverb". - In Peter PanPeter PanPeter Pan is a character created by Scottish novelist and playwright J. M. Barrie . A mischievous boy who can fly and magically refuses to grow up, Peter Pan spends his never-ending childhood adventuring on the small island of Neverland as the leader of his gang the Lost Boys, interacting with...
, in the opening soliloquy of Act V, Captain Hook swears: "Split my infinitives, but 'tis my hour of triumph!" http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks03/0300081h.html
High-profile mentions
- Steven PinkerSteven PinkerSteven Arthur Pinker is a Canadian-American experimental psychologist, cognitive scientist, linguist and popular science author...
traced Chief Justice Roberts' 2009 presidential inauguration oath recitation error to the "shibbolethShibbolethA shibboleth is a custom, principle, or belief distinguishing a particular class or group of people, especially a long-standing one regarded as outmoded or no longer important...
" against "split verbs", particularly the "myth" that it is "impossible to split an infinitive".
Further reading
- AUE: The alt.usage.english Home Page FAQ entry on split infinitives.
- Huddleston, Rodney D.Rodney HuddlestonRodney D. Huddleston is a linguist and grammarian specializing in the study and description of English.Huddleston is the primary author of The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language , which presents a comprehensive descriptive grammar of English.He earned his PhD from the University of Edinburgh...
and Pullum, Geoffrey K.Geoffrey PullumGeoffrey Keith "Geoff" Pullum is a British-American linguist specialising in the study of English. , he is Professor of General Linguistics at the University of Edinburgh....
(2002). The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language, Cambridge University PressCambridge University PressCambridge University Press is the publishing business of the University of Cambridge. Granted letters patent by Henry VIII in 1534, it is the world's oldest publishing house, and the second largest university press in the world...
. ISBN 0-521-43146-8. (See especially pp. 581–582.) - The Columbia Guide to Standard American English