Advanced Structure of American English Testing Prescriptive Rules

Introduction

The English language has a vast set of words such as conjunctions, nouns, adverbs, and verbs that have been used over the years to build on grammar. These are essential especially in formal settings, academic settings and even in informal settings. The grammatical concept of the language, however, has a set of rules that guide its use, both in speech and in writing. These set guidelines are meant to help in making the sentence sound grammatically correct and bring out the intended meaning. One of these rules is the rule on not splitting infinitives. This concept was introduced by the Dean of Canterbury, Henry Alford. He argued that there was no legitimate explanation as to why a split infinitive should be used because it was rarely used at the time, a fact that was disputed by the Oxford dictionary, dating the use of split infinitives to respected writers such as Benjamin Franklin, Daniel Defoe, and F. Scott Fitzgerald. There has been a widespread controversial discussion around the topic, with most scholars and writers sighting no error in splitting infinitives over the years, especially since language is constantly developing. In my opinion, the use of split infinitives has grown over the years with words such as “like” and “so” is commonly used by many in formal and informal speech. Seemingly, the main argument behind the topic is to drive a myth that would be a determining factor between a bad and a good author or writer.

The research on this topic is derived from corpus data, mainly the Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA), which would show the trend of usage of split infinitives, by analyzing every word, which totals to an approximated 11.5 million words as of 2017, since the discovery of the increased use of split infinitives in the 1990s (Gonzales & Dita, 2018). Undoubtedly, the use of split infinitives has tripled through the century, rising from a margin of 44 words per million in the early 90s to 117 words per million as of 2010. It was noted that the use of the word “like” spiraled from 160 per million in the early 90s to 625 per million in 2010. Similarly, the use of the word “so” doubled to 2,367 per million in 2010, from 1,222 per million in the 90s (Gonzales & Dita, 2018). It has been argued that splitting infinitives is ungrammatical and inappropriate since it is assumed that the marker and the infinitive verb are a linguistic unit that is static. Additionally, the main argument was based on the need to control language, in an attempt to keep its origins ‘pure’. Traditional scholars argued that people who use split infinitives in their speech lacked decent education, and speculated that the influence of Latin grammar might be the main cause (Jespersen, 2013). In Latin, the infinitive marker and the infinitive verb are conjoined to be a single word that cannot be split. However, Modern scholars of the language have advocated for its use, claiming that it adds a modifying factor to the infinitive, the same way an adjective modifies a noun. Split infinitives may also alter the meaning of the infinitive, with an example of the statement from Star Trek, “to boldly go where no man has gone before.” Changing the position of the word “boldly” would change the rhythm of the statement, especially since the word boldly stresses the prosody of the statement (Karl, 2017). Split infinitives also make an infinitive seem less ambiguous. For example:

a. You really have to watch him. b. You have to really watch him.

In the first statement, the adverb acts as a modifier for the modal auxiliary verb have to while in the second example, the adverb modifies the infinitive verb watch. This context brings out two different meanings, forming the basis for splitting or not splitting infinitives in literature. However, this situation may exempt the majority of split infinitives. The COCA data reveals that split infinitives are more often used, especially in modern times. The use of split infinitives was quite conspicuous in the early 2000s (Jespersen, 2013). Out of the data received as of 1994 to 2012, there have been a total of 9, 689 tokens of split infinitives. In general, written data comprised of 4,892 tokens while spoken data comprised of 4,797 tokens. With this comparison, split infinitives take up to 0.22% of grammar used as of 2012 (Gonzales & Dita, 2018). Based on this data, it can be deduced that split infinitives do not reveal a big difference between oral and written speech. The most used adverbs that appear between a marker and an infinitive verb include further, actively, fundamentally, simply, just, accurately, really, just, even, and carefully, among others. Intensifiers such as really, fully, even, and just are frequently used as compared to the rest. Notably, splitting infinitives may cause grammatical complications especially in the clausal structure that has been adopted and in use throughout the development of grammar.

The main aim of the paper was to determine whether or not the use of split infinitives affects grammar in any way. This was done by comparing the data from COCA on the growth rate of its use over the years, dating from the 1990s up to 2015. By doing this, it may be deduced that the use of split infinitives has increased drastically over the years, especially since 2000. However, it may be noted that only a few adverbs are used in the construction of split infinitives. Most split infinitives are used as intensifiers in a statement to add rhythm or remove ambiguity to the infinitive. Nonetheless, split infinitives do not pose any form of threat to grammar, and therefore proving the rule to be senseless and baseless.

References

Gonzales, W. D. W., & Dita, S. N. (2018). Split infinitives across World Englishes: a corpus-based investigation. Asian Englishes , 20 (3).

Jespersen, O. (2013). Essentials of English grammar . Routledge.

Karl, P. (2017). Review–Correct English: Reality or Myth?.