Answer: Split Infinitives

[redatdawn.livejournal.com]

handmademark asked, "What is a split infinitive? Why is it so bad?"



The infinitive form of a verb is the form that is uninflected for person or tense. An inflected verb is one that is changed to show what person (first, second, or third), number of people (singular or plural) and/or time (past, present, or future) applies to the verb. For example, the bare infinitive be carries no information about who is performing the verb or whether they are performing it in the past, present or future. The inflected verb is, however, gives more specific information: it's third person, singular, present.

But if that's all a bit too complicated, you can just remember that the infinitive is the form of the verb that you would use to look the verb up in the dictionary.

In English, the infinitive is usually introduced by the particle to. We usually refer to both parts together as the infinitive. In fact, most people recognize infinitives by the fact that they're introduced by the word to:

to + INFINITIVE
For example,

to extract.

A split infinitive is formed when a word or phrase is inserted between to and the uninflected verb, thereby splitting the infinitive.

to + [WORD or PHRASE] + INFINITIVE

For example,

"Our next step, Mister Palmer, is to deftly extract the bullet from this poor man's neck without disturbing the surrounding tissue."

Those who know Ducky, however, know that the professorial Brit would probably never say such a thing. Splitting infinitives is considered improper, sloppy English. It seems this is mostly because we tend to think of the uninflected verb alone as incomplete, and as the "to + infinitive" as a single unit.

So Dr. Mallard would say, instead,

"Our next step, Mister Palmer, is deftly to extract the bullet from this poor man's neck without disturbing the surrounding tissue."

or,

"Our next step, Mister Palmer, is to extract deftly the bullet from this poor man's neck without disturbing the surrounding tissue."

or, less awkwardly,

"Our next step, Mister Palmer, is to extract the bullet from this poor man's neck— deftly, so as not to disturb the surrounding tissue."

However, there is serious debate among grammarians and linguists as to whether there really is anything wrong with splitting infinitives. As with many "incorrect" constructions, split infinitives may be used purposefully for special effect:

"The boss told you specifically to not screw up, McGee," said Tony. "So I hope you're busy not screwing up!"

One common argument against split infinitives has to do with their occurrence (or lack thereof) in Latin. It doesn't hold much water, as I've explained in comments.

Personally, I find the split infinitive to be one of the most innocuous "mistakes" a writer can make. Most of us were taught in school that it's wrong, but it's more a question of style than of correctness. A character who speaks "proper" English might be in the habit of avoiding split infinitives, and a writer should be aware of this. There are also cases in which a split infinitive just sounds weird—see my LJ cut text for an example. In most writing, however, there are more important things to worry about.

Comments

[tejas.livejournal.com]

Isn't this a holdover from Latin where the infinitive is actually a single word?

Or am I misremembering something? :-)

[redatdawn.livejournal.com]

...Sort of. I left out the Latin explanation because I thought it would be too complicated, but here it is:

Once upon a time someone said, "Split infinitives are bad because they never occur in Latin!"

There are two problems with this:

1. English isn't Latin. Some scholars appear to be confused about this, and they have gone on to confuse generations of English majors, not to mention everyday English speakers.

2. In Latin, the split infinitive doesn't exist because it can't. There is no separate particle "to" in the Latin infinitive. In English, split infinitives occur because it's possible to split them. This doesn't make split infinitives in English automatically okay, but it does mean the Latin-based argument is irrelevant.

[tejas.livejournal.com]

Interesting. I don't think I've ever heard it called irrelevant. :-) Usually it's just the Latinists getting on their high horse and then the Englishists rolling their eyes and trying to ignore them. ;-)

[redatdawn.livejournal.com]

Sorry, I didn't mean to come off so...cheekily. But it does seem to be rather irrelevant—to the English language, in which the conditions of Latin don't quite apply.

[tejas.livejournal.com]

I've been dredging up the memories of the debate and apparently it was sparked by those who were wanting to encode more Latinate grammar in English as opposed to those who thought they were being rather silly. :-) I'm wanting to say this was late 18th century, but it's been a while since I read about this stuff. The vicious debate about infinitives is, I think, one of the last remnants of it.

I'm sure someone will pop in and correct me on all sorts of things.

[mendax.livejournal.com]

I'm sure someone will pop in and correct me on all sorts of things.

By no means! You're quite right. Just like art and music, grammar went through a neoclassical movement in the 18th-19th century.

[tejas.livejournal.com]

Wheew! Glad the memory hasn't degraded completely. ;-)

[sherron0.livejournal.com]

Particularly since English is NOT a Romance language, but Germanic based and most of that Latin in English really comes from French when it was forced on it by those oppressive Normans.

[dunv-i.livejournal.com]

Technically, there are infinitives that can be split - I'm thinking of the perfect passive infinitive, which is ppp + esse (to be). And if you consider those single infinitives (which I do, which makes it really annoying when they leave out the esse, which they do all the time), then the argument falls apart even more because they do split it - all the time! Technically, it might be considered a form of enthesis, so it wouldn't be a standard construction but one appropriate and standard for emphasis of certain words.

SO HAH. (I ignore markings that refer to split infinitives.)

[horusguard76.livejournal.com]

To the OP: Thank you for posting this.

I wasn't truly aware of this 'problem' but at times wondered why some sentences sounded weird to my non-native-speaker ear but I wasn't able to pinpoint it.

Thus thank you for explaining this and throwing some really interesting bit of history in as well. :)

[rroselavy.livejournal.com]

Thank you for this!

[redatdawn.livejournal.com]

No problem! Thank you for reading :)

[snailbones.livejournal.com]

Another great explanation, thank you.

[redatdawn.livejournal.com]

No problem!