Mekkala wrote:
>snip<
>
> What it really comes down to is the beauty of a phrase. A split
> infinitive, in a language like English which allows such a construct,
> can lend a certain beauty and concise impact to a phrase, without
> compromising the meaning of it.
>
> A linguist like Ariaan, who probably has never published a book in his
> life, might get screaming and blue in the face when he sees split
> infinitives, despite the fact that a number of the most respected
> authors in the history of mankind used it freely, but I'd compare him
> to many of today's classical musicians -- so desperately married to
> rules, form, complexity, that any kind of artistic beauty flies miles
> over their heads.
ROFL
Hit a nerve there, did I? :-)
1. Would it lend my statements more credibility if I were published?
2. Are you published?
3. If so, did that make people lend more credibility to your statements?
4. Did it make them more true?
5. When did I speak out against the use of split infinitives?
6. How can you compare me to anyone when you don't even know me?
7. I'm desperately married to rules now, am I?
8. Artistic beauty is beyond me???
Heh, you must be a very gifted judge of character, to extract all this info
on me from only one post. But I forgive you, because the tone of my response
to Mike Ruskai might have been a tad patronising. Mea culpa.
Also, I misunderstood his example of the German 'hungrig essen', although
that didn't make my example of 'abseilen' less true. That is a German
infinitive which can be split.
For your information, I *am* about to be published, albeit not as the author
of the book, but merely as the lowly translator. ;-) Does that count?
Although my statements apparently lack all credibility so far, due to my not
being published yet and all, :-) for what it's worth, I fully agree with you
that the beauty of a phrase comes before grammatical rules and conventions.
Having said that, I also think that phrases which tend to be held as
beautiful and even poetic -generally because of the choice of words and
sentence rhythm- are usually not linguistially incorrect in that they do not
go against hard grammar rules; at the most do they fall into the category of
exceptions to said rules. And even when they don't, the very fact that they
are thought of as beautiful should tell us that our set of linguistic rules
is probably too limited and should be expanded with some new rules capturing
the aforementioned phrases. But defining such rules will probably pose
serious problems; making 'exceptions' is far easier. :-)
To address the Star Trek example:
> rephrase the following to retain the dramatic impact of the phrase,
> yet remove the split infinitive:
Impossible, of course.
> "To boldly go where no man has gone before..."
>
> Proper usage, according to you at least, would be:
No no, I never said that. Read my response to Mike Ruskai carefully. I
misunderstood him and intended to correct what I thought was an incorrect
example or reasoning. I am not against splitting infinitives in English.
> "Boldly to go where no man has gone before..."
> or
> "To go boldly where no man has gone before..."
Nah, those two ruin the whole sentence rhythm
> or
> "To go where no man has gone before boldly..."
Ditto
>
> None of these strike one as the original did.
Absolutely true
Rhythm and connotation are everything.
regards,
Ariaan
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