On Wednesday, 28 December 2016 19:00:43 GMT Alan McKinnon wrote: > On 28/12/2016 16:58, Alan Mackenzie wrote: > > Hello, Neil. > > > > On Wed, Dec 28, 2016 at 02:09:10PM +0000, Neil Bothwick wrote: > >> Don't forget split infinitives - the construct that is absolutely > >> forbidden, but no one knows why. I had a production editor who picked > >> me > >> up every time I used one. I pointed out that that battle was lost as > >> soon > >> as Star Trek became mainstream. > > > > I have a theory about this. If you write "we need to thoroughly think > > this through", what is the verb? It tends to become "to > > thoroughlythink" rather than "to think". This coupling of adverb and > > verb into a single word is probably undesirable. Hence, no split > > infinitives, please. > > > > For what it's worth, in German, when there's a "zu" (to) in front of an > > infinitive, it is _never_ separated by even the first part of a > > separable verb, never mind an adverb. > > Well, German is a language after all, a real one with definite rules. > > English is a mish-mash of any good (and sometimes not so good) ideas > that English people came into contact with. Oddly enough, of the 5 major > input sources to modern English, the smallest contribution is from > English itself. Go figure :-) > > As for split infinitives, no-one familiar with types of words would ever > think "thoroughly" is a verb, it's an adverb. The verb is "to think".
Actually, the finite verb was "need". The bit about thinking was in a subsidiary noun clause forming the object of the word "need". > English is there so speakers can use it to communicate, not so that > natural language parsers can have an easy time or grammarians can sit > smugly and "be correct". The people created English, let the people > decide what is proper "Proper" is a good word here, as would be "conventional". "Correct" is a very bad word in reference to natural languages, in spite of its popularity. It implies that only one answer can ever be right, as in arithmetic. -- Regards Peter
