OT: split infinitive

Jerry Friedman · 31 Jul 2009, 16:25 · from 2009-July.txt.gz

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From: jerry_friedman at yahoo.com (Jerry Friedman)
Date: Fri, 31 Jul 2009 09:25:46 -0700 (PDT)
Subject: (urth) OT: split infinitive
In-Reply-To: <cdbc18280907310905y4b4d6809q8514cd462d940c40 at mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <25913.47994.qm at web50704.mail.re2.yahoo.com>

--- On Fri, 7/31/09, Matthew King <automatthew at gmail.com> wrote:
...

> > If someone could do a full search of some of his works
> for the word "to"
> 
> I somehow came by a few of his works in text form.?
> Let's see what
> regular expressions can do.? I'll just search for "to
> " followed by
> any word ending in "ly".
> 
> $ ls *.txt
> Death of Dr Island by Gene Wolfe.txt
> Wolfe, Gene - Exodus From the Long Sun - Book 4.txt
> Island of Dr Death by Gene Wolfe.txt
> Wolfe, Gene - Nightside The Long Sun.txt
> Seven American Nights by Gene Wolfe.txt
> Wolfe, Gene - The Claw of the Conciliator.txt
> Wolfe, Gene - Book of the New Sun 1 - Shadow of the
> Torturer.txt
> Wolfe, Gene - The Urth Of The New Sun.txt
> Wolfe, Gene - Calde of the Long Sun - Book 3.txt
> Wolfe, Gene - Urth of the New Sun, The.txt
> 
> $ egrep -o 'to [[:alnum:]]+ly ' ./*.txt
> ./Seven American Nights by Gene Wolfe.txt:to graphically
> ./Seven American Nights by Gene Wolfe.txt:to fly
> ./Wolfe, Gene - Nightside The Long Sun.txt:to apply
> ./Wolfe, Gene - Nightside The Long Sun.txt:to fly
> ./Wolfe, Gene - Nightside The Long Sun.txt:to fly
> ./Wolfe, Gene - The Claw of the Conciliator.txt:to rely
> ./Wolfe, Gene - The Claw of the Conciliator.txt:to fly
> ./Wolfe, Gene - The Claw of the Conciliator.txt:to ply
> ./Wolfe, Gene - The Claw of the Conciliator.txt:to fly
> ./Wolfe, Gene - The Urth Of The New Sun.txt:to fully
> 
> Results:? one instance each of "to graphically" and
> "to fully"
> 
> The documents were obviously OCRed, so textual corruptions
> may have
> put some split infinitives beyond the reach of a simple
> search.

And some adverbs don't end in -ly.

But /The Best of Gene Wolfe/ is on limited preview at
Google Books.  With your results above, I can find that
extremely split infinitive:

"For an instant, the shadow wall used at the beginning
of the second act was illuminated again to graphically
(or I should say pornographically) present Ellen's
desire...."

http://books.google.com/books?id=ZiSVR-pDf6QC&pg=PA302

The one from /The Urth of the New Sun/ is a false
positive, though.

"Baldanders rose to take it, and I saw that he had grown
to fully twice my height."

http://books.google.com/books?id=748HJZl6dAkC&pg=PA303

Jerry Friedman

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