Wikipedia:Featured article review/Split infinitive/archive1

Split infinitive

Review commentary

Message left at Dpbsmith. Sandy 16:23, 18 October 2006 (UTC)

I just noticed that this article needs to references to add. I guess this will be fixed the fastest way if I put it here. Otherwise, the article is still fine. --Tone 22:23, 17 October 2006 (UTC)

• It's more than references at issue. Take this bit:

Germanic languages (including Old English) do not permit an adverb to fall between an infinitive and its preposition. Compare German:

Ich beschließe, etwas nicht zu tun.

I decide not to do something.

"Zu" here is not analogous to "to" in the English infinitive. This example, I think, is misleading.

And this statement:

"In the 19th century, some grammatical authorities sought to introduce a prescriptive rule from Latin that split infinitives should not be used in English." Um ... how can you split an infinitive in a Latinate language? Infinitives are all single words in that branch.

And:

"It is likely that the split infinitive originally entered the English language under the influence of French; at any rate, it first appears in the time after the Norman Conquest when English was borrowing very widely from French". Same problem—in French, infinitives are single words. An example or two would be nice. And the fact that split infinitives first appeared after the Norman conquest doesn't prove that French had anything to do with it. Before we talk about split infinitives, let's work out from what time was the infinitive in (Old) English expressed with a "to"?

This nomination looks as though it will be defrocked. Just referencing it will take careful work by a specialist; clearing up the other problems will be a further challenge. Tony 09:20, 23 October 2006 (UTC)

I don't entirely agree with Tony: historically the zu in German beschließe zu tun and the de in French decider de faire are certainly related to the to in English decide to do, though obviously the way these are used today diverge, and the traditions of analysing them in these languages are miles apart. So the comparison is valid, though maybe it needs to be handled more discriminatingly. But Tony is quite right that the argument from Latin is nonsense: Latin uses no such preposition (or whatever we want to call it) with the infinitive, so there is no precedent in Latin, one way or the other, and I don't believe the story that the prescriptive rule against split infinitives was inspired by Latin. The article on Linguistic prescription tells a different story (but then I wrote it). Parts of the split infinitive article sound like anti-prescription crusading, and most of it would benefit greatly from better references. --Doric Loon 22:03, 23 October 2006 (UTC)

Doric, does "zu", then, mean "for the purpose of"? That's what I suspect, and if so, it's not a part of the infinitive construction. Tony 02:04, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

No, that would be um ... zu. Depends on the sentence of course: as in English, because the uses of the infinitive can be quite complex when you analyse them in detail. But in a sentence like When I couldn't find my key I tried to climb in through the window German has the exactly parallel infinitive construction Als ich meine Schlüssel nicht fand, versuchte ich durch das Fenster zu klettern. But I think we're getting away from the FA question - so if you want to talk more about this maybe we should continue in the article's talkpage. --Doric Loon 08:57, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

But coming back to the question in hand, I think Tony and I agree that this article is certainly not ready to be a featured article. --Doric Loon 08:59, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

OK, I've put my thoughts on the split infinitive from a comparative linguist point of view onto Talk:Split infinitive#history. Please engage with me further there. --Doric Loon 21:22, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

Comment I'd suggest changing "Probably the most famous split infinitive is..." to "One famous split infinitive is..." Gzkn 06:36, 30 October 2006 (UTC)

FARC commentary

Suggested FA criteria concerns are citations and accuracy of information (1c). Marskell 11:16, 3 November 2006 (UTC)

Over the last couple of weeks, many of the above concerns have been met. The article has improved beyond recognition. I would now support FA status. My above reservations are therefore withdrawn. --Doric Loon 22:06, 5 November 2006 (UTC)

• Remove Is anyone still working on this? Numerous cite tags, and mixed referencing styles in History section. Sandy (Talk) 07:17, 18 November 2006 (UTC)

What does "remove" mean? Remove FA status or remove review request? I think we should keep the FA status. This article is now rather good, and it is ceratinly impressively well referenced. I and a couple of others are still working on it, but at present there doesn't seem that much to do. --Doric Loon 10:33, 18 November 2006 (UTC)

Remove means Remove FA status: if you are still working on the article, we can let the review run longer (the two week FARC period ended yesterday, and it wasn't clear work was progressing). Are you working on the cite tags? Also, the mixed referencing style in History should be addressed (some use Harvard referencing, while others use cite:php). Sandy (Talk) 19:36, 18 November 2006 (UTC)

Don't really see your problem. There are not "numerous" cite tags - there were a couple of places where a superceded tag was left from an earlier stage of work, and I have just deleted those. There is ONE tag left, a theory that ought to be referenced, but so-far a source eludes us. As for the references, this article is particularly well referenced, and to me the references all look full and in proper academic style. If you are worried about commas and points, YOU change them - that would be more constructive use of your time than challenging the FA status on such flimsy grounds. But if you see anything substantial that needs to be done, please tell us. --Doric Loon 21:43, 18 November 2006 (UTC)

You misunderstand the role of reviewers. The cite tags appear to have been addressed, but the mixed referencing style has not yet been fixed: is anyone working on it? Harvard style is mixed with cite:php - either system is fine, but please pick one style to use throughout the article. I'm still a Remove, unless the referencing and Tony's concerns are addressed. Sandy (Talk) 14:51, 24 November 2006 (UTC)

• Remove—numerous problems with content. Tony 07:30, 19 November 2006 (UTC)

That wasn't your most helpful comment, Tony. What exactly do you see as needing improvement? (But the best place for detailed suggestions is on the article's talk page.)--Doric Loon 10:33, 19 November 2006 (UTC)

I recommended removal for the same reasons I explained in the review: problems with the content. You appeared to at least partly agree with me at the time. Here are more problems, taken at random.

• In the lead: "The construction is still the subject of disagreement among native English speakers as to whether it is grammatically correct or good style." Remove "among native English speakers"—it's unnecessary to drive home notions of superiority here. Ungrammatical: change "it" to "its use".
• "people frequently place adverbs ... before the bare infinitive, as in "She will gradually get rid of her teddy bears"), or in transformational-grammar terms from a re-analysis of the role of to.[5]". Where's the infinitive, please? The last bit, after "or", will float above most of our heads, even if referenced.
• "The split infinitive appeared after the Norman Conquest when English was borrowing very widely from French."—Reference required.
• "the majority of infinitives"—why not just "most infinitives"?
• "Then in Middle English, the bare infinitive and the infinitive after "to" took on the same uninflected form"—"Then" is suitable in a narrative register, and usually unsuitable in an encyclopedic one. Why not provide the approximate year or part-century?
• "was borrowing very widely from French. Other Germanic language such as German still do not permit an adverb to fall between an infinitive and its particle (preposition), but French and other Romance languages do. Compare modern German, French, and English:"—"Very" can be dropped. And why does French come into it at all? English is a Germanic language; comparisons with French are tenuous, since Norman French had little influence on the native English grammar; by contrast, it left its mark on the lexis.

I still strongly recommend removal. This article is far too messy to be a FA. Tony 14:22, 23 November 2006 (UTC)

Thanks Tony, that's much more detailed. Half of this is very trivial points of style, and to be honest, you could have removed the word "then" yourself with far less effort than it took you to write two lines complaining about the stylistics of the word. I personally like the phrase "the majority of split infinitives", but by all means change it if it bothers you. Let's concentrate on content. You are right, I did broadly agree with you above, but if you do a "compare versions" you will find that the article has been largely re-written since then. All the problems we both saw there have been worked on. You raise four new points of content, but I don't agree with them. The relevance of French as a neighbouring language with a parallel construction and a history of influence in both directions is very obvious to me. The fact that French influenced English after the Norman conquest is such basic knowledge that it doesn't need to be referenced. In the teddy-bear sentence, the bare infinitive is "get", here being used as part of the future tense; I would have thought the parallel being drawn was pretty obvious. The re-analysis of "to" is explained at least twice in the article: it was originally a preposition, later it was perceived as a "verbal marker" (however one chooses to describe this). I really don't think the article is messy, but please do tidy up any "verys" which are annoying you. --Doric Loon 14:48, 23 November 2006 (UTC)

Reviewers are under no obligation whatsoever to edit the articles they critique. You don't present a convincing case that French is a useful comparison. Just how did French influence English grammar, as opposed to the lexis? The fact that it's a "neighouring language"—across the channel, I guess you mean, is irrelevant. Basque and Spanish are "neighbouring", but couldn't be more different. Polish and German are neighbouring, and are significantly different. The world is full of linguistic discontinuities. What exactly is this "parallel construction" between Fr and Eng? Why is a history of influence from Eng to Fr relevant (as you imply)? A reference is required for the assertion that the "the split infinitive appeared after the Norman Conquest", not that there was influence in general related to the conquest. What is "infinitive" about "will get"?

And what does annoy me is not the occurrence of "very" in the article, or even your preference for several words when one would do, but your contention that half of the points I raise are "very trivial points of style". So, little glitches in the editing of a film that are allowed to survive into the cinema are trivial, are they? It's not a professional angle. Disappointing. Tony 15:25, 23 November 2006 (UTC)

OK perhaps I misunderstood what you think you're doing in critiquing this - I thought you were interested in contributing. I'm only going to answer your specific points in case you are really interested; I'm not arguing with you about the article itself. 1. There are strong areal features in which French and the Germanic languages influence each other in both directions. This goes far beyond lexis. The French perfect tense is borrowed from Germanic, the German pronunciation of the letter r is borrowed from French, and French influences on Middle English include the loss of cases, the plural in -s and a host of other syntactic and morphological features. In the case of the split infinitive, the article shows the close parallel between English and French, which is interesting even if they are unrelated, since very few of the world's languages have anything comparable. But the article points out that there is a possibility (no more than that) that they are indeed related: the preposition + infinitive construction may have been borrowed from Germanic into French and the French idiocyncracy of putting the negation in the middle may have been borrowed back into English as the split infinitive. I should say that is a significant point of comparison. 2. The English future tense (will get) is made up of an auxiliary (will) and a bare infinitive (get). That is the normal way to analyze this - check any beginner's grammar. The article cites scholarship suggesting that the position of the adverb in this (very different) infinitive construction could have been transferred to constructions involving the to-infinitive, thus creating a split infinitive. It is just a theory, but entirely plausible. I think the article explains this pretty clearly. 3. The article does give a reference for the split infinitve appearing shortly after the Norman conquest: it even cites the text verbatim. This is the Layamon passage, which is given in Middle English with verse numbers and translation - you can't reference more specificallly than that. Please read the article - the answers to all your questions are already there. --Doric Loon 21:56, 23 November 2006 (UTC)

Beginners' grammar books or not, I can't easily accept this construction of the future tense as rooted in the infinitive. I go by [[Michael Halliday|functional grammar], which will have none of that. Thus, I think the line taken in the article is potentially POV. (English grammar is notoriously POV, which makes it hard to promote related articles to FA status.) When you say "It is just a theory, but entirely plausible.", you're hitting the nail on the head. I've learnt something from what you say about the French influence on English grammar, but can we have better referencing of these assertions? I'm suspicious about your claim that case was lost in English on account of the French influence. Are you sure that it wasn't the creolisation of Anglo-Friesian and Norse that did it, from the ninth to the 11th centuries? Tony 01:54, 24 November 2006 (UTC)

I almost knew you were going to say that about the future. Quite right: there are different ways to analyse. Historically, of course, the "get" in "will get" goes back to an Old English infinitive, I think we can agree on that. But the loss of inflections means it is possible to talk about a base-form of the English verb and dispense with the concepts of infinitives, present subjunctives, imperatives etc for the modern language altogether. That makes sense for some purposes, for example for understanding how first language acquisition works in modern English, but trendy and fashionable as it is in some circles, it is neither the tradtional nor the most usual current approach. I don't think it's POV to use mainstream terminology just because there is an alternative, especially when the alternative would be less helpful in the context of the particular point which is being made.

Where's the proof that "will get" is derived from the infinitive? It seems counterintuitive to me.

And of course you are right that the loss of English inflections can have several causes at once, and since loss of inflection is in any case a general phenomenon in IE languages the question here is merely what accelerated it so suddenly, so OK, that wasn't my best example. But 11th century Englis was still far more highly inflected than classical Middle English. --Doric Loon 15:16, 24 November 2006 (UTC)

Proof that the Norman influence accelerated the loss of inflection? I understand that it was the creolising process between the Anglo-Frisians and the Norse people in previous centuries.

• I still see problems of content in many places. For example: "in modern English syntax it is better regarded as a particle before a verb form"—I'd have thought the "to" was part of the verb form, not a separate particle preceding it.
• "Some are said to dislike the split infinitive on the grounds that it is not a natural construction in a Germanic language. This is a weak argument today, as standard English has many constructions novel to the Germanic language family. Also, while German and Dutch never allow an adverbial to fall between the preposition and the infinitive, Swedish does. However, given that the further back in history one examines the English language, the more typically Germanic it becomes, it is possible that the reason the medieval split infinitive never gained widespread acceptance was that it was still uncommon enough to sound foreign." False contrast: remove "However". I think the last sentence is drawing a long bow (too long for an authoritative encyclopedic article) and should be removed. There's no verification—just speculation.

I've asked a non-WPian expert on the history of the language—Dr Gary Symes—to comment on the article. Tony 01:18, 29 November 2006 (UTC)

Looks as though he's going to take longer than I expected to respond. Over to you, Joel. Tony 11:49, 7 December 2006 (UTC)

He emailed me and said: "soon". Hmmm. Tony 07:59, 11 December 2006 (UTC)

Eek, seven weeks. I guess one more can't hurt... Marskell 22:45, 11 December 2006 (UTC)

• Dr Symes says:

"I found the piece quite informative on the history of the subject, much of which I was not familiar with. The presentation of the arguments for and against is not especially cogent, & the section Special situations less than helpful. Overall, it is not very well written or organized.

As I expect with these sorts of things, the information is not all reliable. It says that the first known use of the term split infinitive was in 1897 & gives as reference, note 13, Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary, Eleventh Edition (2005–2006), s. v. split infinitive. Merriam-Webster are just recycling the info in the OED article, infinitive, sb., published in July 1900, which had the 1897 cite. OED notes that the phenomenon is also called cleft infinitive, a term which the Wikipeida article nowhere mentions. The OED cite for 'cleft infinitive' at 1893 mentions an article on the cleft infinitive published in the American Journal of Philology, which the Wikipedia article is ignorant of. The OEDS (1976) s.v. infinitive, sb., provides no earlier cites for either term, but has cites for the compounds infinitive-splitter (1927) and -splitting (1926).

My own view is fairly conservative; I do not usually split infinitives, unless it would be patently artificial or mannered not to do so. But it does not generally matter much; & thinking back, I seldom bothered to 'correct' it in student essays, unless it were particularly egregious. What the Fowler brothers said in 1907 remains apt."

The contributors may take these details into account. I guess the article should stay featured. Tony 02:39, 13 December 2006 (UTC)

Please thank Dr Symes on all of our behalf. That is very useful. --Doric Loon 06:26, 13 December 2006 (UTC)

The mixed reference styles (and lack of information about the references) in History still needs to be addressed.

• (Bache, 1869;[15] William B. Hodgson, 1889; Raub, 1897[16]) were condemning the split infinitive, others (Brown, 1851, lukewarmly;[17] Hall, 1882; Onions, 1904; Jespersen, 1905; Fowler and Fowler, cited above)

I could combine all of them into one ref tag for you, which would solve the problem, but the information on some of those refs isn't provided. Sandy (Talk) 00:38, 14 December 2006 (UTC)

• Remove At one time I was a devoted defender of the "Quit the split" cause. In the role of overseer of some of the future's newspaper copyeditors (COM 456 "Newspaper Copyediting" Purdue University, late 1980s) the editor in me considered it a noble cause. And I suppose it made me feel good; knowing stuff that separated me from the rabble.

This changed when I was challenged by a student to defend a finity of splits in some rather major newspapers. Come to find out, those who wrote the stylesheets had neglected to ask me before declaring the entire issue irrelevant. They seemed to say "split or not, makes no nevermind to us."

So: Is this article here to document the history of this specific usage, provide the current best thinking about the issue, or some combination?

This distinction is important. If the conclusion stays entirely within the history bounds (could even be contemporary; I am thinking teleology not chronology) these distinctions are critical and the focus ought to be about how we got to where we are.

The anthropological linguist in me asks that if we include some "how to " focus we need to lead with some version of "now even the experts agree that a split infinitive is not necessarily 'wrong' and a split infinitive does not in itself represent a grammatical error. Those who think it matters, don't matter."

As it now sits I'm not sure where the article lies along this line.

We live within a language that is itself living (unlike Latin, Old English or even Middle French). Today's wart might be tomorrow's bloom. We should only describe, leaving those areas or nations with Royal Appointed grammarians to decide what is proper for their own small and diminishing sphere of those who care.

The article does seem to imply that anyone splitting an infinitive is in error, with the jury still out over the magnitude of the crime.

If this is rather strictly an historic treatment we should ask whether the issue warrants so much attention. Even the uber-populous Wikipedia cannot feature the history of every twig. There are grammar usage errors of far greater consequence and there are parts of speech with pedigrees far nobler, or more interesting.

After all, we gain nothing by agonizing over the rights and wrongs about the 1960's grade school guerrilla actions over "ain't". It just doesn't matter.

My understanding of the mission of Wikipedia (I might have missed this boat as well) is to be an already-NOW resource for anyone who can grab a keyboard for even a few minutes. I have thought that Wikipedia is not trying to render redundant the host of small scholarly journals which do the truly important work (just to be clear, I intend no irony here) of working through mountains of material to make sense of some small corner of the world.

The semiotician in me suspects so much type has been devoted to the split infinitive because it has a cool, easily remembered name. It serves to stand for all that divides the stilted user of formal grammar from the rest of us, in a real sense not at all about grammar. Now that is a topic that still wants a good public airing! That will probably happen over in Ebonics land. Who is publicly campaigning over this issue? The split infinitive has never (to my knowledge) been the subject of a Broadway musical. ;)

I guess this makes it a candidate for de-throning. Can we insist that a featured topic matter, even if it is carefully documented and skillfully addressed? Roy 03:06, 14 December 2006 (UTC)

• Actually, if you look at WP:FAC you'll see that an article's subject matter has no bearing whatsoever as to whether it can be an FA.--Zantastik talk 03:11, 15 December 2006 (UTC)

Nope, 1c requires factual accuracy. Tony 03:42, 15 December 2006 (UTC)

Of course it requires factual accuracy. What I was suggesting is that the topic has no bearing on an article's FA-worthiness. An article on everything from the word "the" to an article on the 2nd world war can reach FA status, if it's written so as to meet WP:FAC. --Zantastik talk 07:22, 16 December 2006 (UTC)

I can only say that I found working on this to be very interesting. This is something which everyone has heard about and people are curious to know what is behind it. We did not find it easy to put together the historical sections, because the information was not readily available (though the research had been done and with effort we could find it); is that not precisely the point of Wikipedia - to make the access easy when people want to know?

Since my own interests are in historical linguistics, the point of the article for me is to chart the history of the construction, and of the controversy. I didn't contribute much to the last part, but I don't think it really intends to make recommendations: just to describe how things were and are.

I would be grateful to know what part of the article gave you the impression that any of us working on it think the split infinitive is wrong. I thought we were successful in staying neutral on that. --Doric Loon 11:19, 14 December 2006 (UTC)