(urth) OT: split infinitive [was Re: torturing BTQ]

[Allan Anderson]

I think the functional questions are 1) does using a split infinitive allow more
rhetorical oomph, and if so, 2) will the elegance and flash it affords
sufficiently dazzle all but the most hardened grammarians?

or,

Will the reader be distracted from your point by the nagging worry that you've
violated some possibly valid rule?

On Thu Jul 30 17:24 , Jerry Friedman  sent:

>Interesting.  I agree that you usually shouldn't put a lot
>of words between an auxiliary verb and a main verb, or
>between "to" and an infinitive.  (By the way, I'm told
>that Head-driven Phrase Structure Grammar treats this "to"
>as an auxiliary verb!)  But English speakers *have always
>split* compound verbs with single words, and we still *do
>not avoid* it.  So this doesn't strike me as an argument
>against splitting infinitives with single words.
>
>Jerry Friedman
>
>--- On Wed, 7/29/09, Milton Jackson miltonwjackson at gmail.com> wrote:
>> When I took grammar in high school, my
>> English teacher told me the reason compound verbs and
>> infinitives shouldn't be split was that large numbers of
>> words between the component parts of the phrase broke the
>> flow of the sentence. How true that is I don't know, but
>> that's what I was taught.
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> On Wed, Jul 29, 2009 at 1:22 PM,
>> Jerry Friedman jerry_friedman at yahoo.com>
>> wrote:
>> 
>> --- On
>> Wed, 7/29/09, James B. Jordan jbjordan4 at cox.net>
>> wrote:
>> 
>> > At 03:10 PM 7/23/2009, you wrote:
>> ...
>>  
>> >> Everything
>> >> I know about split infinitives (and some things
>> other
>> >> people know) is at
>> >>
>> >> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Split_infinitive
>> 
>> >
>> > I was taught that the rule against split infinitives
>> comes
>> > from the
>> > oppression of Latin grammar imposed on English. Latin
>> > infinitives are one
>> > word; hence English infinitives must be treated as
>> one
>> 
>> > word.
>> 
>> You put that clearly.  However, though many people
>> have been taught that (including me), I'd like to see
>> some evidence for it.  When the rule against split
>> infinitives was first stated, in the 19th century, did
>> 
>> anyone actually justify the rule with Latin grammar?  Is
>> there any reason to think that was anyone's
>> justification?
>> 
>> I'd be interested in any citation earlier than the one
>> in the Wikipedia article (John Opdycke, 1941).  I'm
>> not
>> 
>> looking for people claiming without evidence, "The
>> split
>> infinitive was banned because of an analogy with
>> Latin"--
>> we have plenty of those.
>> 
>> Jerry Friedman
>> 
>> 
>> 
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