OT: split infinitive [was Re: torturing BTQ]

Jeffrey Brent McBeth · 31 Jul 2009, 12:25 · from 2009-July.txt.gz

This is the message as the crawl holds it, before anything here touched it. What the conversation shows has been through ingest: transfer encodings decoded, attachments dropped, quote markers repaired, and the archiver’s ? resolved into quotation marks and dashes. Those repairs are judgements and some of them are wrong, which is what this page is for. Email addresses are obscured here as they are everywhere else on the site, so it is before our repairs rather than byte for byte.

From: mcbeth at broggs.org (Jeffrey Brent McBeth)
Date: Fri, 31 Jul 2009 08:25:28 -0400
Subject: (urth) OT: split infinitive [was Re: torturing BTQ]
In-Reply-To: <53392.1249002079 at speakeasy.net>
References: <53392.1249002079 at speakeasy.net>
Message-ID: <20090731122528.GD4189 at broggs.org>

On Thu, Jul 30, 2009 at 06:01:19PM -0700, Allan Anderson wrote:
> 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?

One of the beautiful things about spoken English is the common
practice to insert syllables, words, and phrases in the middle of
other words and phrases where the iambic rhythm largely inherent in
English allows.  I would suggest that splitting infinitives is usually
a manifestation of this larger ability (that I've not heard in Spanish
speakers, and my German coworkers claimed doesn't exist there either).
One more vulgar example is the insertion of swear words into the
middle of other words (Ex. abso-.......-lutely)

(On a poetical bent, I personally find heptameter more natural than
pentameter, though)

Jeff

-- 
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
"The man who does not read good books has no advantage over 
 the man who cannot read them."
 -- Mark Twain
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: not available
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 189 bytes
Desc: Digital signature
URL: <http://lists.urth.net/pipermail/urth-urth.net/attachments/20090731/ed740edb/attachment.pgp>

An unofficial mirror of a public mailing list · about & removal requests · download the archive · before the list · original archive at urth.net