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A split infinitive is a grammatical construction specific to English in which an adverb or adverbial phrase separates the "to" and "infinitive" constituents of what was traditionally called the "full infinitive", but is more commonly known in modern linguistics as the to-infinitive (e.g., to go).
In some cases it may be preferable to split an infinitive. [11] [13] In his grammar book A Plea for the Queen's English (1864), Henry Alford claimed that because "to" was part of the infinitive, the parts were inseparable. [14] This was in line with a 19th-century movement among grammarians to transfer Latin rules to the English language.
In the English language, there are grammatical constructions that many native speakers use unquestioningly yet certain writers call incorrect. Differences of usage or opinion may stem from differences between formal and informal speech and other matters of register, differences among dialects (whether regional, class-based, generational, or other), difference between the social norms of spoken ...
Check out these grammar and spelling flubs: 4) "Wet your appetite" If you spell that phrase like it's shown above, you're basically asking someone to spray you down with water.
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The split infinitive "to boldly go" has also been the subject of jokes regarding its grammatical correctness. British humorist and science-fiction author Douglas Adams describes, in his series The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy , the long-lost heroic age of the Galactic Empire, when bold adventurers dared "to boldly split infinitives that no ...
Syntacticians might analyse the phrase "to be pitied" differently, but traditional grammar sees it as the infinitive of the auxiliary verb used with the participle to create a passive infinitive, i.e. "to be" is still an infinitive word-pair, and if anything else comes between them, it is a split infinitive.
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