Split Infinitives

[jnietzsche333]

Does it bother you when people say that the split infinitive is grammatically incorrect?

Comments

[jnietzsche333]

No, it's very much grammatically correct. Did you learn this in primary school?

http://community.livejournal.com/linguaphiles/2306087.html?view=44185895#t44185895

It's an old argument, but the people who were saying that it was grammatically incorrect have been proven, beyond a shadow of a doubt, wrong.

[jnietzsche333]

Oh, and some people, as you might read, believe it to be, at times, necessary. The term they used is a "euphony," it just makes the sentence sound better.

[evil_genius]

Anybody talking that trash around me gets kicked in the nuts.

[jnietzsche333]

Then you must have been in detention a lot in school...

[vaelynphi]

You think it wise to always kick them there?

[evil_genius]

In the case of large crowds, such as a classroom full of students or the like. I much prefer to run them over. Ideally with a large piece of construction equipment.

[gracelessatthis]

*does random browser thing*

But all grammatical rules are arbitrary anyway. I avoid split infinitives for the same reason I avoid hanging prepositions; not because they're wrong, because technically if they can be understood they're correct forms of the language, but because they are inelegant and ugly.

[jnietzsche333]

Actually that's what i'm arguing. I think that split infinitives, and i'm not the only one, are very expressive.

Can you prove that grammar is arbitrary? How does grammar develop? In the child's mind, right?

In order for you to understand what i'm saying, i'm keeping within the bounds of legitimate grammar, that's hardly arbitrary.

[gracelessatthis]

But as long as something can be understood, who's to say that they are 'right' or 'wrong'? I agree that if the sentance is mangled to the point where there is significant loss of clarity, that is incorrect, but what I meant when I said that grammatical rules are arbitrary is that real grammatical rules are determined by what can and cannot be understood, and things like 'you can't split infinitives', which have no effect on clarity in the modern world, therefore ought not to count as rules (which I believe is what you were saying as well). I just happen not to like them.

And yes, I got here through the Classics community. I am a complete Nietzche nut, you see, and so felt constrained to wander over here.

[jnietzsche333]

Are you in the classics or Latin community?