---------CUSAGE)~ _A CASE OF THE SPLIT INFINITIVES

ET is aforum for the discussion of 'good', 'bad', 'correct', 'incorrect', 'standard','non-standard', 'substandard' and other kinds of usage. In this issue, DA VID CRYSTAL

considers a bone of contention that has been with us for a long time.

'There is nothing more depressing,'a correspondent wrote, 'than towitness the current degradation ofthe English language, most notice-able in the trend to use splitinfinitives .. .' Current? Trend?Let's see.

When was the next quotationwritten? And by whom? 'A manwho has spent all his morning instudying the politics of the world -National Finance, German Repara-tions, Unemployment, BolshevisIPropaganda, International Disarma-ment, The Yellow Peril, TheKenya Problem, Weir Houses,Singapore Base, Indian Disaffec-tion, Cairo Murders, - will rise upwith no fact so deeply bitten intohis soul as that he has encountereda split infinitive ... '

Pass? It was Robert Bridges, in aSociety for Pure English Tract, in1925.

But why begin with him? Let'sgo back a generation or two. In the1880s, Andrew Lang describes thetreaty negotiations between theBritish Government and the UnitedStates. Apparently, the British werewilling to make concessions aboutthe Alabama claims, the Canadianfisheries, and the like, but 'tele-graphed that in the wording of thetreaty it would under no circum-stances endure the insertion of anadverb between the preposition to. . . and the verb'.

But why begin with him? Let'sgo back a generation. 'A correspon-dent states as his own usage, anddefends, the insertion of an adverbbetween the sign of the infinitivemood and the verb. He gives as aninstance, "to scientifically illus-trate". But surely this is a prac-tice entirely unknown to English

. speakers and writers ... ' This wasHenry Alford, Dean of Canterbury,writing in The Queen's English in1869.

Let's rest here awhile. Alfordwas wrong. The splitting of infini-tives can be traced in English fromthe early fourteenth century.

16 ENGLISH TODAY No. 3 - JULY 1985

Fitzedward Hall, wntmg aroundthe turn of our century, compileda catalogue of examples fromsuch writers as Wycliffe, Tyndale,Donne, Goldsmith, Coleridge,Macaulay, Burns, and Browning.The OED provides more goodexamples, from around 1400.

It would be possible, if therewere space, to trace the complaintsabout split infinitives back to thebeginning of the nineteenth cen-tury. But there we would have tostop. There's no mention of theproblem in the main 18th-centurygrammars. As Barbara Strang putit, in her Modern English Structure(1962), 'Fussing about split infini-tives is one of the more tiresomepastimes invented by nineteenthcentury prescriptive grammarians'.Even William Cobbett, who wrotean English grammar 'intended forthe use of schools and of youngpersons in general, but more espe-cially for the use of soldiers, sailors,apprentices, and plough-boys ...to which are added six lessons,intended to prevent statesman [sic]from using false grammar, andfrom writing in an awkward man-ner', made no mention of it -though he has plenty to say aboutother infamous usage questions,such as double negatives and theuse of whom.

There is, then, no question ofthe split infinitive question being anew phenomenon - though it iscertainly a mite more recent than,say, the rule about ending sen-tences with prepositions.

So where are we now? Moderngrammarians like to collect exam-ples of cases where the use of asplit infinitive actually helps thelanguage to make a distinction ofmeaning which would otherwise belost, or ambiguous. Try these (fromSchibsbye and Jespersen):He failed to entirely comprehend it.

To almost succeed is not enough.No one claims to completely under-stand it.

He was palpably too ill to reallycarry out his duty.My favourite is Jespersen's 'Avicious back-hander, which I failedto entirely avoid', which meansimperfect success, where the re-placed adverb could mean completefailure. Then there are all the caseswhere the insertion of an adverb ispromoted by the rhythmic norms ofthe language (the preference forsequences of alternating strong-weak beats): 'to fully comprehend','to boldly go', 'to further ease thetension' (where the alternativeswould produce less natural sequ-ences of unstressed syllables).

But perhaps the clearest cases arethose where there is a coordinationof verb phrases, as in 'All they haveto do is to sit down and faithfullycopy it', or where the adverb is soclosely attached to the verb thatalternative placements are imposs-ible, as in 'He liked to half closehis eyes'.

It is easy to understand how thesplit infinitive debate began - Idevote a chapter to it in my Whocares about English usage? (Penguin,1984), basically arguing that it wasthe influence of Latin grammar.But I don't understand why somuch fuss has been made about thisparticular construction. No oneseems to worry about the samething happening with nouns (e.g .'the big man') - a 'split substan-tive', as Jespersen called it. Whyshould we be so worried about theverb phrase? Sir Ernest Gowersthought it was a 'bad rule', which'makes for ambiguity by inducingwriters to place adverbs in unnatu-ral and even misleading positions'.He even went so far as to call splitinfinitives a 'taboo' so potent thatpeople see them even 'when they donot exist. He reports that a corres-pondent took him to task forwriting 'I gratefully record', andadds: 'The split infinitive bogey ishaving such a devastating effectthat people are beginning to feelthat it must be wrong to put an

adverb between any auxiliary andany part of a verb, or between anypreposition and any part of a verb'.

That is why people who haran-gue the press about split infinitivesare doing the language no service.They are, rather, promoting a spiritof uncertainty which will ultimatelydo far more harm. My view is that,if you have an obsession, keep it toyourself. Is 'obsession' too strong,with its overtones of psychiatricdisease? I will hide behind RobertBurchfield, who is bigger than Iam. In his recent book, The EnglishLanguage (OUP, 1985), he talksabout people 'suffering from the"split infinitive" syndrome'. That'lldo nicely.

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~~

,Hopefully we will be Clbleto l1eutraliz.e tl-1ese.-Vle9Cltive. 0n.90iY19 sitt.(Gltionsif we elect- to frlAitfuJI.!1en.9Clge '1t1 lessconfrol1t~tiol1s .

CAN WE SPLIT INFINITIVES? - A SURVEY OF SEVEN USAGE GUIDES

Modern English Usage, H W Fowler (ed. ErnestGowers), Oxford 1965

The Oxford Guide 10 the English Language, E S CWeiner,1983

The Britannica Book of English Usage, Doubleday-Britannica 1980

The Canadian Writer's Handbook, W E Messenger &J de Bruyn, Prentice-Hall1980

Encyclopedia of English, A Zeiger, Coles, Toronto,1979

The Careful Writer, Theodore M Bernstein, Atheneum,New York, 1977

Longman Dictionary of the English Language, grammarnotes, 1984

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The seven manuals are consistent intheir advice: they see the traditionalruling about splitting infinitives aslargely artificial but still capable ofexercising social control. Theinfinitive ought normally to be kept'intact', says Coles - becausesplitting it 'is widely disliked,' saysLongman - and 'reasonable orunreasonable, it is the norm,' saysBernstein. But, says the Britannica,'the truth is that the split isdesirable whenever its avoidancewould prove awkward or affected ormisleading.' All agree that in suchcircumstances splitting is not justpermissible, but preferable.

-----THEUSAGEGAME-----In ET2 David Crystal referred to 'anew indoor sport' where writers toeditors skin each other successively onpoints of usage and abusage. A recentspate of letters to the editor of TheGuardian (London and Manchester)displayed the key features of this usagegame admirably, as the followingselection of closing letters from theseries demonstrates:

Sir, - It seems that the time has comefor me to abandon my campaign against'split infinitives.' Since that interestingexchange of letters on this subject inyour columns some weeks ago, I seemto have been bombarded with splitinfinitives by the BBC, ITV, andeverybody else.

When I turned on my TV the otherday - a programme called Arena, Ithink - and heard the author of therunner-up for the Guardian's Book of

the Year telling me 'to topographic allyreconstruct' something, the camel'sback was broken, and I have downedtools. But I will still wince whenever Ihear a split infinitive, and I won't buythe book.

(Lord) Winstanley. House of Lords.(23 Feb 85)

Sir, - Lord Winstanley writes (Letters,February 23): 'I will still wincewhenever I hear a split infinitive.' Ishall still wince whenever I hear 'will'instead of 'shall.' - Yours faithfully,

Bernard Withers. Saffron Waldon,Essex. (28 Feb 85)

Sir, - Lord Winstanley (Letters, March4) may wince as often as circumstancesrequire, but there is no 'future tense' inEnglish.

Future time in English can be

referred to in several ways: he's goingto/is to/is about to wince for one group;he may/might/wil1lshal1lcan wince foranother; and certain present tenses for athird, e.g., he's writing to LordWinstanley next week; LordWinstanley leaves for Outer Mongoliatomorrow.

The contrast between these severalways is not that one is correct and theothers aren't, but between the differentways in which the future actions orevents are regarded. - Yoursdescriptively,

G. T. Roberts. London E17. (12 Mar 85)

Sir, - One who knows less than I aboutEnglish grammar is ignorant. One whoknows more is pedantic (of Letters,March 23, etc).

Margaret Aitchison. Redhill, Surrey.(26 Mar 85)

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