Editing Split infinitive (section)

== History of the construction ==
=== Old and Middle English ===
In [[Old English]], infinitives were single words ending in ''-n'' or ''-an'' (comparable to modern [[Dutch language|Dutch]] and [[German language|German]] ''-n'', ''-en''). [[Gerund]]s 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").<ref name=Bryant>{{cite journal | last = Bryant |first = M. M. | title = The Split Infinitive | journal = College English | volume = 8 | issue = 1 |date=October 1946|pages = 39–40 | doi = 10.2307/370450 | publisher = National Council of Teachers of English | jstor = 370450}}</ref> 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 (Layamon)|Brut]]'' (early 13th century):

:''and he cleopede him to; alle his wise cnihtes.''
:'''''for to him reade''''';<ref name="Brook1963">{{cite book |editor1-last=Brook |editor1-first=G. L. |editor2-last=Leslie |editor2-first=R. F. |author=Layamon |title=British Museum Ms. Cotton Caligula A. IX and British Museum Ms. Cotton Otho C. XIII |publisher=Oxford University Press | date=1993 |orig-year=Published in print 1963-1978 for the [[Early English Text Society]] by the Oxford University Press, original author Layamon, {{fl.|1200}}<!--|page=287 -->at=Line 5221 |url=https://quod.lib.umich.edu/c/cme/LayOtho?rgn=main;view=fulltext |access-date=2018-06-20 }}</ref><ref name=Nagle>Nagle (1994). Nagle takes his historical data from {{cite book | last = Visser | first = F. T. | orig-year=1973|year = 1997 | title = An Historical Syntax of the English Language | location = Leiden | publisher = Brill | isbn = 90-04-03273-8}}</ref>
::And he called to him all his wise knights / to him advise.

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:<ref>{{cite book | last = Partridge | first = Astley Cooper | year = 1969 | title = Tudor to Augustan English: A Study in Syntax and Style from Caxton to Johnson | publisher = Deutsch | page = 214 | isbn = 9780233960920 | url = https://books.google.com/books?id=wgIrAAAAIAAJ&q=%22split+infinitive%22 | access-date = 2013-03-03}}</ref>
:''For this was gret unkyndenesse, '''to this manere treten''' there brother.''<ref name="Hall1882">Quoted by {{cite journal | last = Hall |first = Fitzedward | title = On the Separation, by a Word or Words, of to and the Infinitive Mood | journal = American Journal of Philology | volume = 3 | issue = 9 | year = 1882|pages = 17–24 | doi = 10.2307/287307 | publisher = The Johns Hopkins University Press | jstor = 287307}}; [[William Strunk Jr.|Strunk, William]] & [[E. B. White|White, E.B.]], ''[[The Elements of Style]]'', fourth edition, Longman, 2000, p. 58, also speak of 14th-century examples.</ref>
::For this was great unkindness, to in this manner treat their brother.

=== Modern English ===
After its rise in [[Middle English]], the construction became rare in the 15th and 16th centuries.<ref name=Nagle/> [[William Shakespeare]] used it at least once.<ref name="Vizetelly1915">{{cite book | last = Vizetelly | first = Frank | year = 1915 | title = Essentials of English Speech and Literature | publisher = Read Books | page = 156 | isbn = 1-4086-6266-3 | url = https://books.google.com/books?id=zD4jeNDmNXYC&pg=PA156 | access-date = 2010-01-04}}</ref><ref>Some have suggested that another sentence in Shakespeare, from ''Coriolanus'', Act I, scene 2, contains a split infinitive: "Whatever hath been thought on in this state, / That could be brought to bodily act, ere Rome / Had circumvention?" [https://books.google.com/books?id=7vkxAQAAIAAJ&pg=PA50], [https://books.google.com/books?id=KC1XAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA720-IA2] Others say that "bodily" here is an adjective and "act" is a noun, as Vizetelly and [https://books.google.com/books?id=eOBRurBikwQC&dq=%22brought+to+bodily+act%22+%22real%2C+actual%22&pg=PA130 Johnson's Dictionary] do.</ref> The uncontroversial example appears to be a syntactical inversion for the sake of meter:<ref>{{Cite journal|last=Semerjyan|first=Maria|title=The Split Infinitive in Modern English|url=https://www.academia.edu/28206300|journal=[[Academia.edu]]|language=en}}</ref>
:''Root pity in thy heart, that when it grows''
:''Thy pity may deserve '''to pitied be''''' ([[Sonnet 142]]).
[[Edmund Spenser]], [[John Dryden]], [[Alexander Pope]], and the [[King James Version of the Bible]] used none, and they are very rare in the writing of [[Samuel Johnson]]. [[John Donne]] used them several times, though, and [[Samuel Pepys]] also used at least one.<ref name=AHBEU>{{cite book| year = 1996 | title = The American Heritage Book of English Usage: A Practical and Authoritative Guide to Contemporary English | publisher = Houghton Mifflin | pages = 34–35 | isbn = 0-395-76786-5 | url = https://books.google.com/books?id=BEHFyMCdwssC&q=American+Heritage+Book+of+English+Usage | access-date = 2009-07-29}}</ref><ref name=Hall>Hall (1882)</ref> No reason for the near disappearance of the split infinitive is known; in particular, no prohibition is recorded.<ref name=Nagle/>

Split infinitives reappeared in the 18th century and became more common in the 19th.<ref name=MWDEU>{{cite book | author = Merriam-Webster, Inc. | year = 1994 | title = Merriam-Webster's Dictionary of English Usage | pages = 867–868 | isbn = 0-87779-132-5 | url = https://archive.org/details/merriamwebstersd00merr/page/867 | url-access = registration | access-date = 2009-11-12 | publisher = Merriam-Webster}}</ref>
[[Daniel Defoe]], [[Benjamin Franklin]], [[William Wordsworth]], [[Abraham Lincoln]], [[George Eliot]], [[Henry James]], and [[Willa Cather]] are among the writers who used them. Examples in the poems of [[Robert Burns]] attest its presence also in 18th-century Scots:
:''Who dared '''to nobly stem''' tyrannic pride.'' ("The Cottar's Saturday Night")

In colloquial speech, the construction came to enjoy widespread use. Today, according to the ''American Heritage Book of English Usage'', "people split infinitives all the time without giving it a thought."<ref name=AHBEU/> In corpora of contemporary spoken English, some adverbs such as ''always'' and ''completely'' appear more often in the split position than the unsplit.<ref name=EvG>{{cite book | last = Van Gelderen | first = Elly | year = 2004 | title = Grammaticalization as Economy | publisher = John Benjamins | pages = 245–246 | isbn = 90-272-2795-0 | url = https://books.google.com/books?id=e7yG6WSuwi8C&pg=PA246| access-date = 2010-10-31}} [http://www.public.asu.edu/~gelderen/TO-''not''.doc .doc version]</ref>

=== Theories of origins ===
Although it is difficult to say why the construction developed in Middle English, or why it revived so powerfully in Modern English, a number of theories have been postulated.

==== Analogy ====
Traditional grammarians have suggested that the construction appeared because people frequently place adverbs before finite verbs. [[George Oliver Curme|George Curme]] writes: "If the adverb should immediately precede the finite verb, we feel that it should immediately precede also the infinitive…"<ref name="Curme1927">{{cite journal | last = Curme | first = George | author-link = George Oliver Curme | title = The Split Infinitive | journal = American Speech | volume = 2 | issue = 8 |date=May 1927|pages = 341–342 | doi = 10.2307/452976 | publisher = Duke University Press | jstor = 452976}}</ref> Thus, if one says:
:''She gradually '''got''' rid of her stutter.'' and
:''She '''will''' gradually '''get''' rid of her stutter.''
one may, by analogy, wish to say:
:''She'' wants '''''to''' gradually '''get''' rid of her stutter.''
This is supported by the fact that split infinitives are often used as echoes, as in the following exchange, in which the riposte parodies the slightly odd collocation in the original sentence:
:Child: ''I accidentally forgot to feed the hamster.''
:Parent: ''Well, you'll have to try harder not'' to "accidentally forget", ''won't you?''
This is an example of an adverb being transferred into split infinitive position from a parallel position in a different construction.

==== Transformational grammar ====
[[Transformational grammar]]ians have attributed the construction to a re-analysis of the role of ''to''.<ref name=Nagle/>

=== Types ===
In the modern language, splitting usually involves a single adverb coming between the verb and its marker. Very frequently, this is an emphatic adverb, for example:
:''I need you all '''to really pull''' your weight.''
:''I'm '''gonna (going to) totally pulverise''' him.''

Sometimes it is a negation, as in the self-referential joke:

:''Writers should learn '''to not split''' infinitives''.

However, in modern colloquial English, almost any adverb may be found in this syntactic position, especially when the adverb and the verb form a close syntactic unit (really-pull, not-split).

Compound split infinitives, i.e., infinitives split by more than one word, usually involve a pair of adverbs or a multi-word adverbial:
:''We are determined '''to completely and utterly eradicate''' the disease''.
:''He is thought '''to almost never have''' made such a gesture before''.
:''This is a great opportunity '''to once again communicate''' our basic message''.

Examples of non-adverbial elements participating in the split-infinitive construction seem rarer in Modern English than in Middle English. The pronoun ''all'' commonly appears in this position:
:''It was their nature '''to all hurt''' one another''.<ref name="Burchfield1996">Quoted from P. Carey (1981) in {{cite book | last1 = Burchfield | first1 = R. W. | last2 = Fowler | first2 = H. W. | year = 1996 | title = The New Fowler's Modern English Usage | publisher = Oxford University Press | page = [https://archive.org/details/newfowlersmodern00fowl/page/738 738] | isbn = 0-19-869126-2 | url = https://archive.org/details/newfowlersmodern00fowl/page/738 }}</ref>
and may even be combined with an adverb:
:''I need you '''to all really pull''' your weight.''
However an object pronoun, as in the [[#Old and Middle English|Layamon example]] above, would be unusual in modern English, perhaps because this might cause a listener to misunderstand the ''to'' as a preposition:
: *''And he called to him all his wise knights '''to him advise'''''.

While, structurally, acceptable as poetic formulation, this would result in a [[garden path sentence]], particularly evident if the indirect object is omitted:

{| class="wikitable" bgcolor="white"
|-
!Sentence
!Initial likely partial parse
!Final parse
|-
|*''And he called all his wise knights '''to him advise'''''.
|And he called all his knights to come to him...
|And he called all his knights, so that they might advise him
|}

Other parts of speech would be very unusual in this position. However, in verse, poetic inversion for the sake of meter or of bringing a rhyme word to the end of a line often results in abnormal syntax, as with Shakespeare's split infinitive (''to pitied be'', cited above), in fact an inverted passive construction in which the infinitive is split by a [[past participle]]. Presumably, this would not have occurred in a prose text by the same author.

When multiple infinitives are linked by a conjunction, the particle ''to'' tends to be used only once at the beginning of the sequence: ''to eat, drink, and be merry''. In this case, the conjunction and any other words that fall between the ''to'' and the final infinitive have seldom been deemed to create a split infinitive, and almost always have been considered uncontroversial. Examples include "We pray you '''to proceed&nbsp;/ And justly and religiously unfold'''..." (Shakespeare, ''Henry V'', Act II, scene 9) and "...she is determined '''to be independent, and not live''' with aunt Pullet" ([[George Eliot]], ''[[The Mill on the Floss]]'', volume VI, chapter I).<ref>{{cite book | last = Visser |first = F. Th. | title = An Historical Syntax of the English Language, Part 2: Syntactical Units with One Verb | volume = 2 | year = 1966 | publisher = Brill | pages = 1039 | url = https://books.google.com/books?id=ObA3AAAAIAAJ&pg=PA1039 | access-date = 2018-09-10}}</ref>