I'm loving this conversation about adverb placements. I am teaching Advanced English Grammar in Spring; it's going to be fun to tell my students about this one.
Glenda
Glenda Conway
Professor, English
Coordinator, Harbert Writing Center
Department of English and Foreign Languages
University of Montevallo
Montevallo, AL 35115
205 665 6425 office
205 482 4380 cell
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From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar [[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Bruce Despain [[log in to unmask]]
Sent: Monday, December 15, 2014 6:09 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: [SPAM?] Re: split infinitive
Dick,
The sentence you give is indeed awkward. One point you seem to have missed is that the object is "heavy" and the parser is expecting an object to the verb. (Eat and finish are quite frequent with objects, but their objects "may" be understood.) I don't have much of a problem with the heavy objects being displaced by relatively short (light) adverbs.
He was eating too slowly the food that had been placed before him, so he needed to finish quickly the meal of three courses and get right away into a waiting taxi that was outside blocking the street.
Bruce
--- [log in to unmask] wrote:
From: Dick Veit <[log in to unmask]>
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: split infinitive
Date: Mon, 15 Dec 2014 17:08:58 -0500
Bruce,
Judgments are individual, but I still find the two sentences you mention more awkward than the corresponding sentence with the split infinitive.
The queen told the page to enter quietly the chamber where the king was sleeping.
Adverbs in English almost never come between a transitive verb and its object:. We'd never say the following:
He was eating too slowly his food, so he needed to finish quickly the meal and get right away a taxi.
The queen told the page to enter the chamber quietly where the king was sleeping.
Adverbs in English do not comfortably come between a noun and a relative clause that modifies it. I would revise every one of these:
He polished the car carefully that he bought for his mother.
I admire the poems enormously Galway Kinnell wrote.
She remembers the day fondly when he proposed to her.
Kevin confronted the politician angrily who took bribes.
Dick
On Mon, Dec 15, 2014 at 12:18 PM, Bruce Despain <[log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]>> wrote:
Dick,
I don't think your second and third points are very well supported. My argument is admittedly not stronger. It looks to me that the problem arises because of 1) the transitivity of the verb, and 2) the length of the whole object of the verb. It seems to me that the adverb can indeed interrupt the whole object:
The queen told the page to enter quietly the chamber where the king was sleeping.
The queen told the page to enter the chamber quietly where the king was sleeping.
In this way the parse resolves the adverb before the rest of the object is classified more fully. What makes the second option a little awkward is the fact that enter may often stand without an object (its object understood). The third option is not too much to expect in a formal style, where it is customary to avoid splitting the infinitive. Even less modern would have been the English of King James; presumably those dialects would probably not have worded the indirect command as an infinitive, perhaps:
The queen said unto the page, that he should enter quietly the chamber wherein the king was sleeping.
The queen said unto the page, that he should enter the chamber quietly wherein the king was sleeping.
Later:
The queen told the page, that he should quietly enter the chamber where the king was sleeping.
Perhaps it is the pressure of this latter (formal) construction that wants the modern speaker to split the infinitive.
Bruce
--- [log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]> wrote:
From: Dick Veit <[log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]>>
To: [log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Re: ATEG Digest - 11 Dec 2014 to 12 Dec 2014 (#2014-68)
Date: Mon, 15 Dec 2014 11:03:35 -0500
Here's an example I used in class in support of split infinitives:
Attempts to unsplit the infinite (to quietly enter) in the following sentence don't seem to succeed:
The queen told the page to quietly enter the chamber where the king was sleeping.
Consider the possibilities:
* The queen told the page quietly to enter the chamber where the king was sleeping.
Misleading at best. The likely interpetation will be that the queen was speaking quietly.
* The queen told the page to enter quietly the chamber where the king was sleeping.
Pretty awkward. Adverbs do not usually go between verbs and their objects. Who ever says, "I entered quietly the chamber"?
* The queen told the page to enter the chamber quietly where the king was sleeping.
Solved a phony problem and created a real one. Now we've split a relative adverb ("where") from the noun it modifies ("the chamber").
* The queen told the page to enter the chamber where the king was sleeping quietly.
Not even ambiguous. This will be interpreted to mean the king wasn't snoring for a change.
Dick Veit
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