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Split infinitive
A split infinitive is a controversial grammatical construction specific to English in which an adverb or adverbial phrase appears in a to-infinitive phrase between the "to" and the bare infinitive verb of the infinitival phrase "to verb", as "to adverb verb". The adverb is said to "split" the infinitive. The to-infinitive is also known as the full infinitive.
An example is in the opening sequence of the Star Trek television series: "to boldly go where no man has gone before", where the adverb boldly splits the to-infinitive, to go. Multiple words may also separate the elements of a to-infinitive (such as in "population is expected to more than double by 2050"), forming a compound infinitive.
In English grammatical usage and language aesthetics, split infinitives have often been deprecated or avoided, perceived as incorrect, ambiguous, or at least avoidable. This is despite the ongoing use of some split infinitives in the colloquial speech of various communities of English speakers. In the 19th century, some linguistic prescriptivists sought to categorically disallow split infinitives, and the resulting conflict had considerable cultural importance — accompanied as it was by claims of classism or educational elitism. The construction still provokes disagreement, but recent editions of English usage guides have largely dropped their objection to it.
The split infinitive terminology is no longer widely used in modern linguistics. Some linguists question whether a to-infinitive phrase can meaningfully be called a "full infinitive" and, consequently, whether an infinitive can be "split" at all.
In Old English, infinitives were single words ending in -n or -an (comparable to modern Dutch and German -n, -en). Gerunds were formed using to followed by a verbal noun in the dative case, which ended in -anne or -enne (e.g., tō cumenne = "coming, to come"). In Middle English, the bare infinitive and the gerund coalesced into the same form ending in -(e)n (e.g., comen "come"; to comen "to come"). The "to" infinitive was not split in Old or Early Middle English.
The first known example of a split infinitive in English, in which a pronoun rather than an adverb splits the infinitive, is in Layamon's Brut (early 13th century):
This may be a poetic inversion for the sake of meter, and therefore says little about whether Layamon would have felt the construction to be syntactically natural. However, no such reservation applies to the following prose example from John Wycliffe (14th century), who often split infinitives:
After its rise in Middle English, the construction became rare in the 15th and 16th centuries. William Shakespeare used it at least once. The uncontroversial example appears to be a syntactical inversion for the sake of meter:
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Split infinitive AI simulator
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Split infinitive
A split infinitive is a controversial grammatical construction specific to English in which an adverb or adverbial phrase appears in a to-infinitive phrase between the "to" and the bare infinitive verb of the infinitival phrase "to verb", as "to adverb verb". The adverb is said to "split" the infinitive. The to-infinitive is also known as the full infinitive.
An example is in the opening sequence of the Star Trek television series: "to boldly go where no man has gone before", where the adverb boldly splits the to-infinitive, to go. Multiple words may also separate the elements of a to-infinitive (such as in "population is expected to more than double by 2050"), forming a compound infinitive.
In English grammatical usage and language aesthetics, split infinitives have often been deprecated or avoided, perceived as incorrect, ambiguous, or at least avoidable. This is despite the ongoing use of some split infinitives in the colloquial speech of various communities of English speakers. In the 19th century, some linguistic prescriptivists sought to categorically disallow split infinitives, and the resulting conflict had considerable cultural importance — accompanied as it was by claims of classism or educational elitism. The construction still provokes disagreement, but recent editions of English usage guides have largely dropped their objection to it.
The split infinitive terminology is no longer widely used in modern linguistics. Some linguists question whether a to-infinitive phrase can meaningfully be called a "full infinitive" and, consequently, whether an infinitive can be "split" at all.
In Old English, infinitives were single words ending in -n or -an (comparable to modern Dutch and German -n, -en). Gerunds were formed using to followed by a verbal noun in the dative case, which ended in -anne or -enne (e.g., tō cumenne = "coming, to come"). In Middle English, the bare infinitive and the gerund coalesced into the same form ending in -(e)n (e.g., comen "come"; to comen "to come"). The "to" infinitive was not split in Old or Early Middle English.
The first known example of a split infinitive in English, in which a pronoun rather than an adverb splits the infinitive, is in Layamon's Brut (early 13th century):
This may be a poetic inversion for the sake of meter, and therefore says little about whether Layamon would have felt the construction to be syntactically natural. However, no such reservation applies to the following prose example from John Wycliffe (14th century), who often split infinitives:
After its rise in Middle English, the construction became rare in the 15th and 16th centuries. William Shakespeare used it at least once. The uncontroversial example appears to be a syntactical inversion for the sake of meter: