Kieran Healy

To Boldly Go

Yesterday was grammar day, and I’m reluctant to turn it into grammar week. But a comment in this post on How Appealing just seems designed to provoke:

Received an email from Fifth Circuit Judge Jerry E. Smith this morning entitled “Units of time or value and the genitive possessive.” The email states:

Getting this one wrong is as bad as splitting an infinitive. There should be no legitimate split of authority on this plain rule of grammar (as there is, for example, on whether “none” is singular or plural). “The idiomatic possessive should be used with periods of time and statements of worth.” [example given: “six months’ confinement”]—Bryan A. Garner, A Dictionary of Modern Legal Usage 674 (Oxford 2d ed. 1995)

I always am pleased when my understanding of how the English language works turns out to be correct.

Ah, the majesty of the law. Confident. Pithy. Unambiguous. And, sadly, quite wrong. The substantive point about idiomatic possessives is correct, but that throwaway line about “as bad as splitting an infinitive” is just terrible. A split infinitive is not a grammatical error. At worst, it’s a stylistic fault. Quite often, it is to be preferred over some excruciatingly artificial alternative.

Bill Bryson has a good discussion of the issue in his Dictionary of Troublesome Words:

Consider these three sentences, all from The Times and all with a certain ring of desperation about them. “The agreement is unlikely significantly to increase the average price”; “It was a nasty snub for the Stock Exchange and caused it radically to rethink its ideas”; “The education system had failed adequately to meet the needs of industry and commerce, he said”.

The problem in each instance is one of simple conflict between the needs of the infinitive and the needs of the adverb. The natural position for the two elements of a full infinitive is together: “He proceeded to climb the ladder”. With adverbs the most natural position is, very generally, just before the verb: “He slowly climed the ladder”. The problem of the split infinitive occurs when the two are brought together: “He proceeded to slowly climb the ladder.”

The authorities are almost unanimously in agreement that there is no reason to put the needs of the infinitive above those of the adverb. In practice the problem can usually be circumvented. Most adverbs are portable and can be moved to a position from which they can perform their function without interfering with the infinitive … But that is not to say that there is any grammatical basis for regarding the infinitive as inviolable.

When moving the adverb produces ambiguity or, to use Fowler’s words, patent artificiality, the cure is at least as bad as the disease. Consider again one of the Times sentences: “The education system had failed adequately to meet the needs of industry and commerce, he said”. The adverb here is clearly out of place. As written, the sentence suggests that the education system had set out to fail and had done so adequately…

If you wish, you may remain blindly intolerant of the split infinitive, but you should do so with the understanding that you are without the support of a single authority. Even Partridge, that most deeply conservative of scholars, is against you. He says: “Avoid the split infinitive wherever possible; but if it is the clearest and most natural construction, use it boldy. The angels are on our side.”

That’s what you get after a day spent doing end-of-semester paperwork, I suppose. A certain… persnickitiness. There will be no more preaching about style and grammar tomorrow, I promise.

Ah, did you read “The Grammarian’s Funeral” when you took Vicky lit? You seem a person after that heart. Curious

I disagree with Bill Bryson’s observation that the most “natural” position for the adverb is just before the verb. To me, “he climbed the ladder slowly” is every bit as natural as “he slowly climbed the ladder,” if not more so. Indeed, all of the awkward examples from The Times could be made to sound just fine, without violating the split “infinitive” rule, simply by moving the adverb to what I consider the most natural position, i.e., at the end of the verb phrase: “The agreement is unlikely to increase the average price significantly;” “It was a nasty snub for the Stock Exchange and caused it to rethink its ideas radically”; “The education system had failed to meet the needs of industry and commerce adequately, he said.”

Your alternative construction sounds fine to me, though it might put the adverb too far away from the verb in some cases. But I’m happy to split the difference, because it’s a matter of style, not grammar. There’s no grammatical error here, and so no rule to break. Yet, as I think Partridge says somewhere, the sort of person who “would sooner eat peas with a knife than split an infinitive” usually thinks those who dare to boldly go are being embarrassingly ungrammatical. And that’s a mistake.

I suspect that the question of whether or not an adverb can be “too far” from the verb will turn on what the verb actually modifies. If the adverb only modifies the verb, then one would expect its most natural position (though not necessarily the only grammatical one) to be immediately adjacent to the verb. I suspect, however, that adverbs often modify more than that. To borrow the first example, suppose that I “climb the ladder slowly.” What, exactly, am I doing slowly? “Climbing the ladder,” or simply “climbing?” If it’s the former, then the distance between teh words slowly and climb would seem to be irrelevant; all that matters is that the word slowly is adjacent to the phrase climbed the ladder.

If you are interested, I have more on the topic of split “infinitives” (and why, IMO, to+verb constructions shouldn’t be called “infinitives” at all) on my blog.