Split infinitive

Abstract: The place of grammar in an English or literacy curriculum has long been a source of debate, one in which professionals, politicians and the public have often engaged with unbridled enthusiasm. As such, the debate has sometimes been characterised more by ideology or polemic, than by intellectual engagement with the core ideas. In part, this is because grammar has become inextricably intertwined with notions of correctness and standards. Indeed, Hancock (2009) argues that 'Grammar is error and error is grammar in much of the public mind.' You can be certain that if the question of grammar is raised, 90% of contributors to the discussion will focus on the niceties of grammatical accuracy, be they dangling participles, split infinitives, or here in England, the linguistics sins of 'estuary English'. Frequently, the debate is not even about grammar but about accent and pronunciation: estuary English, for example, is more about a particular accent than about grammatical variations from Standard English. And before long, the accuracy of our grammatical usage becomes a touchstone by which we measure the morals of the nation. Get your grammar wrong and the very fabric of the nation crumbles around our ears. Nearly a hundred years ago, the Newbolt Report argued for the importance of a corrective approach to language to banish the 'evil habits of speech contracted in home and street' (Newbolt, 1921) and in the 1980s, British Conservative politician, Norman Tebbitt, linked 'bad English' with involvement in crime. The tendency to associate grammatical correctness with 'a more general 'struggle' against dark social forces, and specifically as a means to counter the anarchy of the (working class) home and street' (Cameron, 1995, p. 96) is a persistent one.

Abstract: The English language is a battlefield. Since the age of Shakespeare, arguments over correct usage have been acrimonious, and those involved have always really been contesting values - to do with morality, politics and class. THE LANGUAGE WARS examines the present state of the conflict, its history and its future. Above all, it uses the past as a way of illuminating the present. Moving chronologically, the book explores the most persistent issues to do with English and unpacks the history of 'proper' usage. Where did these ideas spring from? Which of today's bugbears and annoyances are actually venerable? Who has been on the front line in the language wars? THE LANGUAGE WARS examines grammar rules, regional accents, swearing, spelling, dictionaries, political correctness, and the role of electronic media in reshaping language. It also takes a look at such niggling concerns as the split infinitive, elocution and text messaging. Peopled with intriguing characters such as Jonathan Swift, H. W. Fowler and George Orwell as well as the more disparate figures of Lewis Carroll, Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Lenny Bruce, THE LANGUAGE WARS is an essential volume for anyone interested in the state of the English language today or intrigued about its future.

Abstract: This chapter states the general rule for punctuating a string of adjectives and provides examples to flesh out this rule. It introduces adverbs into the string and show how hyphens can be used to more clearly distinguish the adjectives. The chapter then explains what is meant by awkward adjective phrases and shows how to avoid them. Finally it describes how to position adverbs to enhance communication. When adverbs are included within a string of adjectives, it is often useful to introduce a hyphen between the adverb and the adjective that is modified by the adverb. Adverbs typically modify adjectives and verb forms. When used with compound verbs and infinitives, several choices are available when it comes to positioning the adverb. Although the term split infinitive is often used with a negative connotation, the practice of splitting infinites is acceptable in many instances.

Abstract: Antoinette Renouf and Andrew Kehoe: Introduction 1. Looking more closely at existing boundaries of the discipline Christian Mair: Corpus linguistics meets sociolinguistics: the role of corpus evidence in the study of sociolinguistic variation and change Joan C. Beal: Creating corpora from spoken legacy materials: variation and change meet corpus linguistics Tuija Virtanen: Discourse linguistics meets corpus linguistics: theoretical and methodological issues in the troubled relationship Turo Hiltunen and Jukka Tyrkko: 'Tis well known to barbers and laundresses: Overt references to knowledge in English medical writing from the Middle Ages to the Present Day Tanja Saily and Jukka Suomela: Comparing type counts: The case of women, men and -ity in early English letters 2. Examination of a known language feature from a new point of view Karin Aijmer: Does English have modal particles Julie Van Bogaert: A reassessment of the syntactic classification of pragmatic expressions: the positions of you know and I think with special attention to you know as a marker of metalinguistic awareness Magnus Ljung: The functions of expletive interjections in spoken English 3. Examination of the potential of a new corpus, tool, model or technique to extend linguistic knowledge Geoffrey Leech and Nicholas Smith: Change and constancy in linguistic change: How grammatical usage in written English evolved in the period 1931-1991 Alexander Onysko, Manfred Markus and Reinhard Heuberger: Joseph Wright's 'English Dialect Dictionary' in electronic form: A critical discussion of selected lexicographic parameters and query options Lilo Moessner: How representative are the 'Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society' of 17th-century scientific writing? Bertus van Rooy and Lize Terblanche: A multi-dimensional analysis of a learner corpus Andrew Kehoe and Matt Gee: Weaving web data into a diachronic corpus patchwork 4. Re-examination of known linguistic phenomenon in light of further/new data Elisabetta Adami: "To each reader his, their or her pronoun". Prescribed, proscribed and disregarded uses of generic pronouns in English Anna Belladelli: The interpersonal function of going to in written American English Marta Degani: Re-analysing the semi-modal ought to: an investigation of its use in the LOB, FLOB, Brown and Frown corpora Javier Calle-Martin and Antonio Miranda-Garcia: On the use of split infinitives in English Juhani Rudanko: Exploring change in the system of English predicate complementation, with evidence from corpora of recent English Sara Gesuato: Encoding of goal-directed motion vs resultative aspect in the COME + infinitive construction Georgie Columbus: A corpus-based analysis of invariant tags in five varieties of English Christoph Ruhlemann: Discourse presentation in EFL textbooks: a BNC-based study Goran Kjellmer: Awful adjectives: a type of semantic change in present-day corpora 5. Discussion Panel Marianne Hundt: Global English - Global Corpora: Report on a panel discussion at the 28th ICAME conference