Teacher Discussion Forums

Do you agree with this statement:

http://www.yaelf.com/aueFAQ/mifsplitinfinitive.shtml

Phrases consisting of "to be" or "to have" followed by an adverb
and a participle are *not* split infinitives, and constitute the
natural word order. "To generally be accepted" and "to always have
thought" are split infinitives; "to be generally accepted" and "to
have always thought" are not.

Well, yes, agree, but I thought that linguists generally disputed the fact that split infinitives were "unnatural" anyway.

woodcutter wrote:Well, yes, agree, but I thought that linguists generally disputed the fact that split infinitives were "unnatural" anyway.

Are you a linguist?

What advice do you, a teacher, give to your students regarding the split-infinitive?

metal56 wrote:What advice do you, a teacher, give to your students regarding the split-infinitive?

To boldly split like the crew of NSA Protector, and get out of there before the green fire-breathing guy shows up.

In his panties.

Tip for anyone confused about the panties (especially those centuries and lightyears removed from the stardate this post was, um, posted): Do a search for 'panties' and read between the links. (Hopefully, using the word 'panties' won't become a craze on Dave's or the next big thing in TEFL or TEIL - Teaching English as an Intergalactic Language - in the interim: We're all doing "The Panties Approach" now. We certainly have more success teaching with it than those Klingons, clinging on as they still are to Michael Lewis's ridiculous and outdated "ideas". That's how we learned to speak in this rather snazzy RP way, without any trace of our old alien idiom or accent).

As far as I, and most other examiners are concerned, we may indeed go forth and boldly split the infinitive without worrying that doing so is ungrammatical. The only thing to think about is that in doing so we are adding emphasis.

Want to add emphasis - split the infinitive.
Don't want to add emphasis - don't split.

That's all I want to say, so now I'll split.

Andrew Patterson wrote:As far as I, and most other examiners are concerned, we may indeed go forth and boldly split the infinitive without worrying that doing so is ungrammatical. The only thing to think about is that in doing so we are adding emphasis.

Want to add emphasis - split the infinitive.
Don't want to add emphasis - don't split.

That's all I want to say, so now I'll split.

Aw, Andrew, don't split before you've answered th main question:

Do you agree with this?

"to be generally accepted" and "to
have always thought" are not split infinitives.

Do you agree with this?

"to be generally accepted" and "to
have always thought" are not split infinitives.

Well, perhaps what is happening here is that grammarians have always held that adverbs go between auxiliaries and the main verb. A few prescriptivist ones held that the infinitive can't be split. What then happens when you try to put both rules together? The adverb here is between to and the infinitive despite being between the auxiliary and main verb, so I suppose it is a split infinitive of sorts but that may be a pedantic answer. There is still emphasis but it is more muted than without an auxiliary.

Am I a linguist? Certainly not a cunning one......

I say to my students (in theory, cos they never ask, and why bring it up?) "Don't you worry yourselves about split infinitives, go ahead and split 'em" because I thought that is what I am supposed to say, and it seems sensible to me.

I can't understand, therefore, why anyone would worry about whether anything was or was not a split infinitive.

woodcutter wrote:Am I a linguist? Certainly not a cunning one......

I say to my students (in theory, cos they never ask, and why bring it up?) "Don't you worry yourselves about split infinitives, go ahead and split 'em" because I thought that is what I am supposed to say, and it seems sensible to me.

I can't understand, therefore, why anyone would worry about whether anything was or was not a split infinitive.

The best thing you can do is to warn them to be careful when choosing to use such a construction, as quite a number of higher education institutions still disallow usage of such.

They should check out the target audience and the view of each individual examining body.

Metal wrote:

They should check out the target audience and the view of each individual examining body.

It would be useful if anybody knows of any examining bodies that have a problem with the split infinitive. Personally, I don't know of any that do.

SATS maybe? They have a problem with most things

Is it a split infinitive? Maybe.
Is it a red herring? Absolutely!