A different take on splitting infinitives

Oct 3, 2011 by

In an earlier posting, I discussed the prescriptive prohibition again splitting infinitives in English (as in to boldly go…). But here’s a different take on this problem, suggested by one of my students: why not split...

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To boldly go…

Dec 15, 2010 by

One of the “poisonous tomatoes” of the English grammar — constructions widely-used by speakers (and writers) but frequently castigated by prescriptive grammarians — is the so-called split infinitive, where an...

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On “poisonous tomatoes” of grammar teaching

Dec 14, 2010 by

In yesterday’s posting I wrote about poor standards of teaching language and grammar in schools and the resulting misperceptions leading to “epistemological populism” (any wonder that U.S. school students came in...

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