split infinitive - WordReference English dictionary, questions, discussion and forums. "Que vous divisiez les atomes ou les mots en phonèmes , cette soirée est pour vous." tō cumenne = "coming, to come"). Infinitives split by multi-word phrases ("compound split infinitives") and those split by pronouns are demonstrably less usual than the straightforward example of an infinitive split by an adverb. Whether you split atoms or infinitives, this is the place to be . Though traditional English grammar often tries to treat the to as part of the infinitive form (like the -en inflection in German), it is possibly better to call the to an infinitival subordinator or verb … It dates back to about 1500 or something, and is based not on Latin but the fact that English is a German language, and you don’t split the infinitive in German beginning with “zu”… You may also see examples of onomatopoeia in sentences. split infinitive definition: 1. a phrase in which an adverb or other word is put between "to" and an infinitive. comen "come"; … To be seriously discussing is not. To seriously discuss is a split infinitive. Infinitives are not phrases; they are single words that cannot be "split" in languages that have legitimate ones. German is the same. Learn more. (No long lists of proper articles to memorize here!) You can transform German infinitives into nouns by capitalizing them (remember, German nouns are always capitalized). In Old English, infinitives were single words ending in -n or -an (compare modern Dutch and German-n, -en). Gerunds were formed using to followed by a verbal noun in the dative case, which ended in -anne or -enne (e.g. An infinitive is split if there is a word or words between the particle to and the remainder of the infinitive (to-less infinitives cannot be split). The wrongness of the split infinitive is about as old as English itself. Likewise, split infinitives are far more common in speech than in, say, academic writing. 5 Uses of the German Infinitive. If you want to remember what a split infinitive is, just remember what might be the most famous example: Star Trek's to boldly go where no one has gone before.To boldly go is a split infinitive. Nothing can be placed between the stems and infinitive endings of Latin vive-re and French viv-re. A split infinitive is when an adverb is inserted between ... unlike these other tongues has no distinctive ending for the infinitive analogous to the German “en”, the French “er”, “ir” and “re” or the Italian “are”, “ere”, and “ire”. #4 The whole construction is often called an Infinitivsatz, and the zu an Infinitivkonjunktion.The zu fulfils a similar function in a non-finite clause to dass in a finite clause. In Middle English, the bare infinitive and the gerund coalesced into the same form ending in -(e)n (e.g. All Free. Nothing can come between the German verbal stem leb-"live" and the infinitive … To qualify as a split infinitive, the extraneous word or words must come immediately after to. What are split infinitives? What Are Infinitives? An infinitive is the uninflected form of a verb along with to—for example, to walk, to inflect, to split.. 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