| 1 |
On Wednesday, 28 December 2016 19:00:43 GMT Alan McKinnon wrote: |
| 2 |
> On 28/12/2016 16:58, Alan Mackenzie wrote: |
| 3 |
> > Hello, Neil. |
| 4 |
> > |
| 5 |
> > On Wed, Dec 28, 2016 at 02:09:10PM +0000, Neil Bothwick wrote: |
| 6 |
> >> Don't forget split infinitives - the construct that is absolutely |
| 7 |
> >> forbidden, but no one knows why. I had a production editor who picked |
| 8 |
> >> me |
| 9 |
> >> up every time I used one. I pointed out that that battle was lost as |
| 10 |
> >> soon |
| 11 |
> >> as Star Trek became mainstream. |
| 12 |
> > |
| 13 |
> > I have a theory about this. If you write "we need to thoroughly think |
| 14 |
> > this through", what is the verb? It tends to become "to |
| 15 |
> > thoroughlythink" rather than "to think". This coupling of adverb and |
| 16 |
> > verb into a single word is probably undesirable. Hence, no split |
| 17 |
> > infinitives, please. |
| 18 |
> > |
| 19 |
> > For what it's worth, in German, when there's a "zu" (to) in front of an |
| 20 |
> > infinitive, it is _never_ separated by even the first part of a |
| 21 |
> > separable verb, never mind an adverb. |
| 22 |
> |
| 23 |
> Well, German is a language after all, a real one with definite rules. |
| 24 |
> |
| 25 |
> English is a mish-mash of any good (and sometimes not so good) ideas |
| 26 |
> that English people came into contact with. Oddly enough, of the 5 major |
| 27 |
> input sources to modern English, the smallest contribution is from |
| 28 |
> English itself. Go figure :-) |
| 29 |
> |
| 30 |
> As for split infinitives, no-one familiar with types of words would ever |
| 31 |
> think "thoroughly" is a verb, it's an adverb. The verb is "to think". |
| 32 |
|
| 33 |
Actually, the finite verb was "need". The bit about thinking was in a |
| 34 |
subsidiary noun clause forming the object of the word "need". |
| 35 |
|
| 36 |
> English is there so speakers can use it to communicate, not so that |
| 37 |
> natural language parsers can have an easy time or grammarians can sit |
| 38 |
> smugly and "be correct". The people created English, let the people |
| 39 |
> decide what is proper |
| 40 |
|
| 41 |
"Proper" is a good word here, as would be "conventional". "Correct" is a |
| 42 |
very bad word in reference to natural languages, in spite of its popularity. |
| 43 |
It implies that only one answer can ever be right, as in arithmetic. |
| 44 |
|
| 45 |
-- |
| 46 |
Regards |
| 47 |
Peter |
Archives