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A split infinitive is a grammatical construction in which an
adverb An adverb is a word or an expression that generally modifies a verb, adjective, another adverb, determiner, clause, preposition, or sentence. Adverbs typically express manner, place, time, frequency, degree, level of certainty, etc., answering ...
or
adverbial phrase
In linguistics, an ''adverbial phrase'' ("AdvP") is a multi-word expression operating adverbially: its syntactic function is to modify other expressions, including verbs, adjectives, adverbs, adverbials, and sentences. Adverbial phrases can be divi ...
separates the "to" and "
infinitive
Infinitive (abbreviated ) is a linguistics term for certain verb forms existing in many languages, most often used as non-finite verbs. As with many linguistic concepts, there is not a single definition applicable to all languages. The word is deri ...
"
constituents of what was traditionally called the full infinitive, but is more commonly known in modern linguistics as the to-infinitive (e.g. ''to go''). In the history of English language aesthetics,
the split infinitive was often deprecated, despite its prevalence in colloquial speech. The opening sequence of the ''
Star Trek
''Star Trek'' is an American science fiction media franchise created by Gene Roddenberry, which began with the eponymous 1960s television series and quickly became a worldwide pop-culture phenomenon. The franchise has expanded into vari ...
'' television series contains a well-known example, "
to ''boldly'' go where no man has gone before", wherein the adverb ''boldly'' was said to split the full infinitive, ''to go''.
Multiple words may split a to-infinitive, such as: "The population is expected to ''more than'' double in the next ten years."
In the 19th century, some
linguistic prescriptivists sought to introduce a rule proscribing the split infinitive, and the resulting conflict had considerable cultural importance. The construction still renders disagreement, but modern English usage guides have largely dropped the objection to it.
The ''split infinitive'' terminology is not widely used in modern linguistics. Some linguists question whether a to-infinitive phrase can meaningfully be called a "full infinitive" and, consequently, whether an infinitive can be "split" at all.
History of the construction
Old and Middle English
In
Old English
Old English (, ), or Anglo-Saxon, is the earliest recorded form of the English language, spoken in England and southern and eastern Scotland in the early Middle Ages. It was brought to Great Britain by Anglo-Saxon settlement of Britain, Anglo ...
, infinitives were single words ending in ''-n'' or ''-an'' (comparable to modern
Dutch
Dutch commonly refers to:
* Something of, from, or related to the Netherlands
* Dutch people ()
* Dutch language ()
Dutch may also refer to:
Places
* Dutch, West Virginia, a community in the United States
* Pennsylvania Dutch Country
People E ...
and
German
German(s) may refer to:
* Germany (of or related to)
** Germania (historical use)
* Germans, citizens of Germany, people of German ancestry, or native speakers of the German language
** For citizens of Germany, see also German nationality law
**Ge ...
''-n'', ''-en'').
Gerund
In linguistics, a gerund ( abbreviated ) is any of various nonfinite verb forms in various languages; most often, but not exclusively, one that functions as a noun. In English, it has the properties of both verb and noun, such as being modifiable ...
s were formed using ''to'' followed by a verbal noun in the
dative case
In grammar, the dative case (abbreviated , or sometimes when it is a core argument) is a grammatical case used in some languages to indicate the recipient or beneficiary of an action, as in "Maria Jacobo potum dedit", Latin for "Maria gave Jacob a ...
, which ended in ''-anne'' or ''-enne'' (e.g., ''tō cumenne'' = "coming, to come").
In
Middle English
Middle English (abbreviated to ME) is a form of the English language that was spoken after the Norman conquest of 1066, until the late 15th century. The English language underwent distinct variations and developments following the Old English p ...
, 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 or Laghamon (, ; ) – spelled Laȝamon or Laȝamonn in his time, occasionally written Lawman – was an English poet of the late 12th/early 13th century and author of the ''Brut'', a notable work that was the first to present the legend ...
's ''
Brut'' (early 13th century):
:''and he cleopede him to; alle his wise cnihtes.''
:''for to him reade'';
[Nagle (1994). Nagle takes his historical data from ]
::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 (; also spelled Wyclif, Wickliffe, and other variants; 1328 – 31 December 1384) was an English scholastic philosopher, theologian, biblical translator, reformer, Catholic priest, and a seminary professor at the University of O ...
(14th century), who often split infinitives:
:''For this was gret unkyndenesse, to this manere treten there brother.''
[Quoted by ; Strunk, William & White, E.B., '']The Elements of Style
''The Elements of Style'' is an American English writing style guide in numerous editions. The original was written by William Strunk Jr. in 1918, and published by Harcourt in 1920, comprising eight "elementary rules of usage", ten "elementary p ...
'', fourth edition, Longman, 2000, p. 58, also speak of 14th-century examples.
::For this was great unkindness, to in this manner treat their brother.
Modern English
After its rise in
Middle English
Middle English (abbreviated to ME) is a form of the English language that was spoken after the Norman conquest of 1066, until the late 15th century. The English language underwent distinct variations and developments following the Old English p ...
, the construction became rare in the 15th and 16th centuries.
[ ]William Shakespeare
William Shakespeare ( 26 April 1564 – 23 April 1616) was an English playwright, poet and actor. He is widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's nation ...
used it once, or perhaps twice. The uncontroversial example appears to be a syntactical inversion for the sake of meter:
:''Root pity in thy heart, that when it grows''
:''Thy pity may deserve to pitied be'' (Sonnet 142
Sonnet 142 is one of 154 sonnets written by the English playwright and poet William Shakespeare.
Structure
Sonnet 142 is an English or Shakespearean sonnet. The English sonnet has three quatrains, followed by a final rhyming couplet. It fol ...
).
Edmund Spenser
Edmund Spenser (; 1552/1553 – 13 January 1599) 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 recognized as one of the premier craftsmen of ...
, John Dryden
''
John Dryden (; – ) was an English poet, literary critic, translator, and playwright who in 1668 was appointed England's first Poet Laureate.
He is seen as dominating the literary life of Restoration England to such a point that the per ...
, Alexander Pope
Alexander Pope (21 May 1688 O.S. – 30 May 1744) was an English poet, translator, and satirist of the Enlightenment era who is considered one of the most prominent English poets of the early 18th century. An exponent of Augustan literature, ...
, and the King James Version of the Bible
The King James Version (KJV), also the King James Bible (KJB) and the Authorized Version, is an English translation of the Christian Bible for the Church of England, which was commissioned in 1604 and published in 1611, by sponsorship of K ...
used none, and they are very rare in the writing of Samuel Johnson
Samuel Johnson (18 September 1709 – 13 December 1784), often called Dr Johnson, was an English writer who made lasting contributions as a poet, playwright, essayist, moralist, critic, biographer, editor and lexicographer. The ''Oxford ...
. John Donne
John Donne ( ; 22 January 1572 – 31 March 1631) was an English poet, scholar, soldier and secretary born into a recusant family, who later became a clergy, cleric in the Church of England. Under royal patronage, he was made Dean of St Paul's ...
used them several times, though, and Samuel Pepys
Samuel Pepys (; 23 February 1633 – 26 May 1703) was an English diarist and naval administrator. He served as administrator of the Royal Navy and Member of Parliament and is most famous for the diary he kept for a decade. Pepys had no mariti ...
also used at least one.[Hall (1882)] 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 (; born Daniel Foe; – 24 April 1731) was an English writer, trader, journalist, pamphleteer and spy. He is most famous for his novel ''Robinson Crusoe'', published in 1719, which is claimed to be second only to the Bible in its ...
, Benjamin Franklin
Benjamin Franklin ( April 17, 1790) was an American polymath who was active as a writer, scientist, inventor, statesman, diplomat, printer, publisher, and political philosopher. Encyclopædia Britannica, Wood, 2021 Among the leading inte ...
, William Wordsworth
William Wordsworth (7 April 177023 April 1850) was an English Romantic poet who, with Samuel Taylor Coleridge, helped to launch the Romantic Age in English literature with their joint publication ''Lyrical Ballads'' (1798).
Wordsworth's ' ...
, Abraham Lincoln
Abraham Lincoln ( ; February 12, 1809 – April 15, 1865) was an American lawyer, politician, and statesman who served as the 16th president of the United States from 1861 until his assassination in 1865. Lincoln led the nation thro ...
, George Eliot
Mary Ann Evans (22 November 1819 – 22 December 1880; alternatively Mary Anne or Marian), known by her pen name George Eliot, was an English novelist, poet, journalist, translator, and one of the leading writers of the Victorian era. She wro ...
, Henry James
Henry James ( – ) was an American-British author. He is regarded as a key transitional figure between literary realism and literary modernism, and is considered by many to be among the greatest novelists in the English language. He was the ...
, and Willa Cather
Willa Sibert Cather (; born Wilella Sibert Cather; December 7, 1873 – April 24, 1947) was an American writer known for her novels of life on the Great Plains, including ''O Pioneers!'', '' The Song of the Lark'', and ''My Ántonia''. In 1923, ...
are among the writers who used them. Examples in the poems of Robert Burns
Robert Burns (25 January 175921 July 1796), also known familiarly as Rabbie Burns, was a Scottish poet and lyricist. He is widely regarded as the national poet of Scotland and is celebrated worldwide. He is the best known of the poets who hav ...
attest its presence also in 18th-century Scots:
:''Who dared to nobly stem tyrannic pride.'' ("The Cottar's Saturday Night")
In colloquial speech, the construction came to enjoy widespread use. 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.][.doc version]
/ref>
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 Curme 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 stutter.'' and
:''She will gradually get rid of her stutter.''
one may, by analogy, wish to say:
:''She wants to gradually get rid of her stutter.''
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?''
This is an example of an adverb being transferred into split infinitive position from a parallel position in a different construction.
Transformational grammar
Transformational grammar
In linguistics, transformational grammar (TG) or transformational-generative grammar (TGG) is part of the theory of generative grammar, especially of natural languages. It considers grammar to be a system of rules that generate exactly those combin ...
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 (=going to) totally pulverise him.''
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, i.e., infinitives split 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''.[Quoted from P. Carey (1981) in ]
and may even be combined with an adverb:
:''I need you to all really pull your weight.''
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''.
While, structurally, acceptable as poetic formulation, this would result in a garden path sentence
A garden-path sentence is a grammatically correct sentence that starts in such a way that a reader's most likely interpretation will be incorrect; the reader is lured into a parse that turns out to be a dead end or yields a clearly unintended me ...
particularly evident if the indirect object is omitted:
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
In linguistics, a participle () (from Latin ' a "sharing, partaking") is a nonfinite verb form that has some of the characteristics and functions of both verbs and adjectives. More narrowly, ''participle'' has been defined as "a word derived from ...
. Presumably, this would not have occurred in a prose text by the same author.
Finally, there is a construction with a word or words between ''to'' and an infinitive that nevertheless is not considered a split infinitive, namely, infinitives joined by a conjunction. This is not objected to even when an adverb precedes the second infinitive. Examples include "We pray you ''to'' proceed/ And ''justly and religiously unfold''..." (Shakespeare, ''Henry V'', Act II, scene 9) and "...she is determined ''to'' be independent, and ''not live'' with aunt Pullet" (George Eliot
Mary Ann Evans (22 November 1819 – 22 December 1880; alternatively Mary Anne or Marian), known by her pen name George Eliot, was an English novelist, poet, journalist, translator, and one of the leading writers of the Victorian era. She wro ...
, ''The Mill on the Floss
''The Mill on the Floss'' is a novel by George Eliot, first published in three volumes in 1860 by William Blackwood. The first American edition was published by Harper & Brothers, Publishers, New York.
Plot summary
Spanning a period of 10 to ...
'', volume VI, chapter I).
History of the term
It was not until the very end of the 19th century that terminology emerged to describe the construction. The earliest use of the term ''split infinitive'' on record dates from 1890. The now rare ''cleft infinitive'' is almost as old, attested from 1893; in the 1890s it was briefly the more common term but almost disappeared after 1905. "Splitting the infinitive" is slightly older, going back to 1887.[ According to the main ]etymological dictionaries
An etymological dictionary discusses the etymology of the words listed. Often, large dictionaries, such as the ''Oxford English Dictionary'' and ''Webster's Third New International Dictionary, Webster's'', will contain some etymological informati ...
, ''infinitive-splitting'' and ''infinitive-splitter'' followed in 1926 and 1927, respectively. The term ''compound split infinitive'', referring to a split infinitive with more than one word between the particle and the 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
Jens Otto Harry Jespersen (; 16 July 1860 – 30 April 1943) was a Danish linguist who specialized in the grammar of the English language. Steven Mithen described him as "one of the greatest language scholars of the nineteenth and twentieth ce ...
challenged the epithet: "'To' is no more an essential part of an infinitive than the definite article is an essential part of a nominative
In grammar, the nominative case (abbreviated ), subjective case, straight case or upright case is one of the grammatical cases of a noun or other part of speech, which generally marks the subject of a verb or (in Latin and formal variants of Engl ...
, 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 Renaissance
The Renaissance ( , ) , from , with the same meanings. is a period in European history marking the transition from the Middle Ages to modernity and covering the 15th and 16th centuries, characterized by an effort to revive and surpass ideas ...
times, and frequently the 18th century scholar Robert Lowth
Robert Lowth ( ; 27 November 1710 – 3 November 1787) 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
Lowth was born in Hampshire, England, G ...
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 text before the 19th century.
Possibly the earliest comment against split infinitives was by the American John Comly in 1803.[
]An adverb should not be placed between the verb of the infinitive mood and the preposition ''to'', which governs it; as ''Patiently'' to wait—not To ''patiently'' wait.
Another early prohibition came from an anonymous American in 1834:
The practice of separating the prefix of the infinitive mode from the verb, by the intervention of an adverb, is not unfrequent among uneducated persons … 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 (7 October 181012 January 1871) was an English churchman, theologian, textual critic, scholar, poet, hymnodist, and writer.
Life
Alford was born in London, of a Somerset family, which had given five consecutive generations of cl ...
addressed it in his ''Plea for the Queen's English'' in 1864:
A correspondent states as his own usage, and defends, the insertion of an adverb between the sign of the infinitive mood and the verb. He gives as an instance, "''to scientifically illustrate.''" 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.[''A Plea for the Queen's English: Stray notes on Speaking and Spelling''](_blank)
Henry Alford, Strahan, 1866, page 188
Others 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; and 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. In the 1907 edition of ''The King's English'', the Fowler 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 #REDIRECT BBC #REDIRECT BBC
Here i going to introduce about the best teacher of my life b BALAJI sir. He is the precious gift that I got befor 2yrs . How has helped and thought all the concept and made my success in the 10th board exam. ...
...
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 that 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 (26 July 1856 – 2 November 1950), known at his insistence simply as Bernard Shaw, was an Irish playwright, critic, polemicist and political activist. His influence on Western theatre, culture and politics extended from ...
wrote letters to newspapers supporting writers who used the split infinitive and
Raymond Chandler
Raymond Thornton Chandler (July 23, 1888 – March 26, 1959) was an American-British novelist and screenwriter. In 1932, at the age of forty-four, Chandler became a detective fiction writer after losing his job as an oil company executive durin ...
complained to the editor of ''
The Atlantic
''The Atlantic'' is an American magazine and multi-platform publisher. It features articles in the fields of politics, foreign affairs, business and the economy, culture and the arts, technology, and science.
It was founded in 1857 in Boston, ...
'' about a
proofreader
Proofreading is the reading of a galley proof or an electronic copy of a publication to find and correct reproduction errors of text or art. Proofreading is the final step in the editorial cycle before publication.
Professional
Traditional m ...
who interfered with 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 (Gowers' revised second edition, 1965) 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
One of the earliest arguments against the split infinitive, expressed by an anonymous contributor to the ''New-England Magazine'' in 1834, was based on the impression that it was not an observable feature of English as used by "good authors."
Henry Alford
Henry Alford (7 October 181012 January 1871) was an English churchman, theologian, textual critic, scholar, poet, hymnodist, and writer.
Life
Alford was born in London, of a Somerset family, which had given five consecutive generations of cl ...
, in his ''Plea for the Queen's English'' in 1864 went further, stating that use of the "split infinitive" was "a practice entirely unknown to English speakers and writers."
In principle there is a consensus that language teachers should advise on usage on the basis of what is observed to be current practice in the language. If the early critics of the construction did not observe it to be usual in (the prestige variety of) English as they knew it, their advice was legitimate. However it would be difficult to argue that way today, as the split infinitive has become very common.
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 that serves as a marker of the infinitive. In German and Dutch, this marker (''zu'' and ''te'' respectively) 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
Infinitive (abbreviated ) is a linguistics term for certain verb forms existing in many languages, most often used as non-finite verbs. As with many linguistic concepts, there is not a single definition applicable to all languages. The word is deri ...
" without ''to'' and the "full infinitive" with it, and to conceive of ''to'' as part of the full infinitive. (In the sentence "I had my daughter clean her room," ''clean'' is a bare infinitive; in "I told my daughter 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 (, or , ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally a dialect spoken in the lower Tiber area (then known as Latium) around present-day Rome, but through the power of the ...
''habere''." The usage writer John Opdycke based a similar argument on the closest French, German, and Latin translations.
However, the two-part infinitive is disputed, and some linguists argue that the infinitive in English is a single-word verb form, which may or may not be preceded by the particle ''to''. Some modern
generative
Generative may refer to:
* Generative actor, a person who instigates social change
* Generative art, art that has been created using an autonomous system that is frequently, but not necessarily, implemented using a computer
* Generative music, mus ...
analysts classify ''to'' as a "peculiar"
auxiliary verb
An auxiliary verb (abbreviated ) is a verb that adds functional or grammatical meaning to the clause in which it occurs, so as to express tense, aspect, modality, voice, emphasis, etc. Auxiliary verbs usually accompany an infinitive verb or a p ...
; other analysts, as the infinitival
subordinator.
Besides, even if 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 frequent argument of those who tolerate split infinitives is that the split-infinitive prohibition is based solely on a misguided comparison with
Latin
Latin (, or , ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally a dialect spoken in the lower Tiber area (then known as Latium) around present-day Rome, but through the power of the ...
.
However, the argument from the classical languages may be a
straw man
A straw man (sometimes written as strawman) is a form of argument and an informal fallacy of having the impression of refuting an argument, whereas the real subject of the argument was not addressed or refuted, but instead replaced with a false ...
argument, as the most important critics of the split infinitive never used it. Although many writers who support the split infinitive suggest that this argument motivated the early opponents of the construction, there is little primary source evidence for this; indeed, Richard Bailey has noted that, despite the lack of evidence, this theory has simply become "part of the folklore of linguistics".
An infinitive in Latin or Greek is never used with a marker equivalent to English ''to'', and a Latin infinitive cannot be split. The argument would be that the construction should be avoided because it is not found in the classics. The claim that those who dislike split infinitives are applying rules of Latin grammar to English is asserted by many authorities who 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."
[ The assertion is also made in the ''Oxford Guide to Plain English'', ''Compact Oxford English Dictionary'', and ]Steven Pinker
Steven Arthur Pinker (born September 18, 1954) is a Canadian-American cognitive psychologist, psycholinguist, popular science author, and public intellectual. He is an advocate of evolutionary psychology and the computational theory of mind.
P ...
's ''The Language Instinct
''The Language Instinct: How the Mind Creates Language'' is a 1994 book by Steven Pinker, written for a general audience. Pinker argues that humans are born with an innate capacity for language. He deals sympathetically with Noam Chomsky's claim t ...
'', among others.
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 as inferior aspects of English that differed from Latin. Today no linguist would accept an argument that judges the usage of one language by the grammar of another. Besides, if Latin has no equivalent of the marker ''to'', it provides no model for the question of where to put it, and therefore supports neither splitting nor not-splitting. As Richard Lederer puts it: "there is no precedent in these languages for condemning the split infinitive because in Greek and Latin (and all the other romance languages
The Romance languages, sometimes referred to as Latin languages or Neo-Latin languages, are the various modern languages that evolved from Vulgar Latin. They are the only extant subgroup of the Italic languages in the Indo-European language fam ...
) the infinitive is a single word that is impossible to sever."
Current views
Present style and usage manuals deem simple split infinitives unobjectionable. For example, Curme'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
Ambiguity is the type of meaning in which a phrase, statement or resolution is not explicitly defined, making several interpretations plausible. A common aspect of ambiguity is uncertainty. It is thus an attribute of any idea or statement ...
," 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'' is a usage dictionary published by Merriam-Webster, Inc., of Springfield, Massachusetts . It is currently available in a reprint edition (1994) or . (The 1989 edition did not include ''Merriam-'' ...
'' says: "the objection to the split infinitive has never had a rational basis."[ According to ]Mignon Fogarty
Mignon Fogarty (born 1967) is a former faculty member in journalism at the University of Nevada, Reno, and a former science writer who produces an educational podcast about English grammar and usage titled ''Grammar Girl's Quick and Dirty Tips for ...
, "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 f avoiding split infinitives when they are not necessary
F, or f, is the sixth letter in the Latin alphabet, used in the modern English alphabet, the alphabets of other western European languages and others worldwide. Its name in English is ''ef'' (pronounced ), and the plural is ''efs''.
Hist ...
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
Robert William Burchfield CNZM, CBE (27 January 1923 – 5 July 2004) was a lexicographer, scholar, and writer, who edited the ''Oxford English Dictionary'' for thirty years to 1986, and was chief editor from 1971.
Education and career
Born in W ...
'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." Still more strongly, older editions of ''The Economist
''The Economist'' is a British weekly newspaper printed in demitab format and published digitally. It focuses on current affairs, international business, politics, technology, and culture. Based in London, the newspaper is owned by The Econo ...
'' Style Guide said, "Happy the man who has never been told that it is wrong to split an infinitive: the ban is pointless. Unfortunately, to see it broken is so annoying to so many people that you should observe it" (but added "To never split an infinitive is quite easy."). This recommendation, however, is weakened in the 12th edition. After stating that the ban is pointless, ''The Economist Style Guide'' now says "To see a split infinitive nevertheless annoys some readers, so try to avoid placing a modifier between "to" and the verb in an infinitive. But if moving the modifier would ruin the rhythm, change the meaning or even just put the emphasis in the wrong place, splitting the infinitive is the best option."
As well as varying according to 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 that any native speaker would reject. 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.
A special case is the splitting of an infinitive by the negation in sentences like
:''I soon learned to not provoke her.''
:''I want to not see you any more.''
Here 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,[ but most speakers do not make such a distinction.
In an example drawn from 3121 sampled usages by the ]British National Corpus
The British National Corpus (BNC) is a 100-million-word text corpus of samples of written and spoken English from a wide range of sources. The corpus covers British English of the late 20th century from a wide variety of genres, with the intention ...
, the use of ''to not be'' (versus ''not to be'') is only 0.35%.
Avoiding split infinitives
Writers who avoid splitting infinitives either place the splitting element elsewhere in the sentence or reformulate the sentence, perhaps rephrasing it without an infinitive and thus avoiding the issue. However, a sentence such as "to more than double" must be completely rewritten to avoid the split infinitive; 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 remodeled instead of having a word lifted from its original place & dumped elsewhere …[Fowler (1926), p. 559.]
In some cases, moving the adverbial creates an ungrammatical sentence or changes the meaning. R. L. Trask 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.''
::Trask considers this almost as unwieldy as its immediate predecessor.
:*''Gradually, she decided to get rid of the teddy bears she had collected.''
::This might imply that her decision or the fact that she will get rid of her teddy bears is gradual.
The sentence can be rewritten to maintain its meaning, however, by using a noun or a different grammatical aspect
In linguistics, aspect is a grammatical category that expresses how an action, event, or state, as denoted by a verb, extends over time. Perfective aspect is used in referring to an event conceived as bounded and unitary, without reference to ...
of the verb, or by avoiding the informal "get rid":
:*''She decided to get rid of her teddy bear collection gradually.''[With a slight change in meaning: she could have a teddy bear collection without having collected it herself, e.g., if she bought it in its entirety.]
:*''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.
See also
* Common English usage misconceptions
This list comprises widespread modern beliefs about English language usage that are documented by a reliable source to be misconceptions.
With no authoritative language academy, guidance on English language usage can come from many sources. Thi ...
Notes
References
*
*
*
Further reading
AUE: The alt.usage.english Home Page
FAQ entry on split infinitives.
*
* Huddleston, Rodney D. and Pullum, Geoffrey K. (2002). ''The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language'', Cambridge University Press
Cambridge University Press is the university press of the University of Cambridge. Granted letters patent by Henry VIII of England, King Henry VIII in 1534, it is the oldest university press
A university press is an academic publishing hou ...
. . (''See especially pp. 581–582.'')
''The Columbia Guide to Standard American English''
External links
{{DEFAULTSORT:Split Infinitive
English usage controversies
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