Infinitive

Infinitive (pronounced in-fin-i-tiv)

(1) In English grammar, the infinitive mood or mode (a grammatical mood).

(2) In English grammar, a non-finite verb form considered neutral with respect to inflection.

(3) In English grammar, a verbal noun formed from the infinitive of a verb.

1425–1475:  From the late Middle English, from the Middle French infinitif, the from Late Latin infinitivus (unlimited, indefinite), from the Latin infinitus (boundless, unlimited, endless (indefinite in the grammatical sense)), ivus being the Latin suffix forming adjectives).  In essence, the infinitive is a form of the verb not inflected for grammatical categories such as tense and person and used without an overt subject.  In English, the infinitive usually consists of the word “to”, followed by the verb.  Infinitive is a noun & adjective, infinitival is an adjective and infinitively an adverb; the noun plural is infinitives.

The most fastidious grammar Nazis condemn split infinitives.  In English, a split infinitive exists if an adverb sits between “to” and a verb: “to fully understand” is a split infinitive whereas “fully to understand” is not.  The “rule” exists, unfortunately, because of the influence, however misunderstood, of Classical Latin on the development of Modern English.  Infinitives appear to have been split since at least the 1400s, the practice increasingly common in Middle English before becoming rare in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.  Shakespeare seems to have dabbled only twice and then probably as an artistic device, a syntactical inversion better to suit the rhythm of his prose.  Spenser, Dryden, Pope, and the King James Version of the Bible used none, and Dr Johnson, John Donne & Samuel Pepys were sparing.  Despite this timeline, no reason for the near extinction is known; there’s nothing in the documents of the era to suggest scholarly or other disapprobation.  They reappeared in the eighteenth century, became more common in the nineteenth and it was only then the label emerged to describe the construction; the earliest use of “splitting the infinitive" dating from 1887.

The Split Infinitive as a fetish

It was also in the nineteenth century the dispute began, some authorities condemning, others endorsing.  Objections fall into three categories:

(1) The descriptivist objection: Also known as linguistic snobbery, this (very English) view, first published in 1834, argued the split infinitive was a thing commonly used by uneducated persons but not by people "of the better classes".

(2) The argument from the full infinitive: It’s a very technical point.  That there are two parts to the infinitive is disputed with some linguists asserting the infinitive is a single-word verb form which may or may not be preceded by the particle “to”.  Some modern generative analysts classify “to” as a "peculiar" auxiliary verb; others as the infinitival subordinator.  However, even when the concept of the full infinitive is accepted, it does not necessarily follow that any two words belonging together grammatically need be adjacent to each other. It’s true they usually are, but exceptions are not uncommon, such as an adverb splitting a two-word finite verb ("will not do"; "has not done").

(3) The argument from classical languages: It’s a bit of a linguistic myth the prohibition is because the grammatical rules of Classical Latin were absorbed by Modern English.  An infinitive in Latin is never used with a marker equivalent to the English “to” so there’s thus no parallel for the construction.  Despite this, claims by those who disapprove that they are applying rules of Latin grammar to English has widely been asserted for over a century but they rely on a false analogy with Latin; Latin infinitives appear as a single word.  The rule which prohibits splitting hints at the deference to Latin at a time when it was fashionable to apply its rules to other languages.  It was another variation of snobbery.  As late as the Renaissance, particularly in the churches and universities, there was a reverence for the purity of the languages of antiquity and aspects of English which differed were regarded as inferior.  By the nineteenth century, with English increasingly a world-wide tongue, but for a few pedants such views had faded and there’s anyway the etymological point that there’s no precedent from antiquity because in Greek and Latin (and all romance languages), the infinitive is a single word impossible to sever.  In “educated English”, there has evolved a curious convention in the handling of split infinitives.  The accepted practice is they should be avoided in writing but in oral use are actually desirable if their adoption renders a more elegant sentence (which is almost always the case).  English has similar conventions for written and oral forms such as the use of verbal shorthand of foreign extraction such as inter-alia which appear thus in writing but which, when spoken, are translated into English.

Henry Fowler (1858–1933), whose A Dictionary of Modern English Usage (1926) remains a reliable arbitrator of all things right and wrong in English, rules on the matter with his usual clarity. declaring: The English-speaking world may be divided into (1) those who neither know nor care what a split infinitive is; (2) those who do not know but care very much; (3) those who know and condemn; (4) those who know and approve; and (5) those who know and distinguish.  These he reviewed and decided those who neither knew nor cared were the happy majority and should be envied by all the others.  Among the others may or may not have been George Bernard Shaw (GBS; 1856-1950) who, after noticing a proofs-editor had "corrected" his infinitives, remarked: “I don’t care if he is made to go quickly, or to quickly go – but go he must!”

Some girls are so mean they'll correct even Captain Kirk.  William Shatner (b 1931) and Lindsay Lohan in Planet Fitness commercial played during Super Bowl 2022.