In defence of the former assertion, I'd simply and provocatively suggest that what people often talk about as 'the infinitive' in English probably can't be sustained as such under closer scrutiny. For the moment I will simply mention that modal verbs' "infinitive" construction has no 'to' in front of the verb. I'd further suggest that the way that most English speakers untainted by the idea of an infinitive in theory demonstrate the psychological reality of the 'to' actually being analysed as belonging to the preceding word or phrase, not the verb. The way that the phrase 'how to' can be used as a unit on it's own attests to this. Hence ...
How To Always Get A Seat at a Crowded Coffee Shop
That is a split infinitive. And for those who are uninitiated into syntactic mysteries, suffice to say that the 'Always' in that article title is splitting the alleged infinitive 'To Get'. Way back in the day, some prescriptive Victorian grammarians seem to have been over-influenced by Latin's supposed perfections and probably their own aesthetic sensibilities decided that putting an adverb between the 'to' and the verb was a no-no and then tried to make it stick by making other people think it was a social gaffe and intellectually inferior to commit this supposed syntactic crime they had invented. Fortunately most of the English speaking world has ignored this blatant piece of social elitism, but that hasn't stopped misinformed and misguided editors and teachers from making people feel bad about their stylistic choices in use of English.
But the truth is sometimes the so-called split infinitive is the best way to say it. The phrase above is an example. Try it: what are the alternatives?
How always to get a seat ...
How to get always a seat ...
Neither of them really sound right, do they? The infinitive must be split or you'll sound stilted.
No comments:
Post a Comment