It is a development sure to deeply disconcert those who consider themselves sticklers for English grammar.
But Captain Kirk might well be delighted. Because split infinitives – where an adverb is put between ‘to’ and the verb – are apparently becoming the norm.
Perhaps the best-known example in popular culture is ‘To boldly go where no man has gone before’, spoken by Kirk at the start of Star Trek episodes. Traditionalists argue it should be ‘To go boldly where no man has gone before’.
But what was once considered a grammatical howler to many is now commonplace, researchers into current English usage have found.
A collection of British conversations containing 11.5million words has uncovered an invasion of split infinitives since the 1990s – with the number of uses tripling
A collection of British conversations containing 11.5million words has uncovered an invasion of split infinitives since the 1990s – with the number of uses tripling.
Linguists who analysed conversations recorded on people’s smartphones discovered that the split infinitive rate rose from a mere 44 words per million in the early 1990s to 117 per million in the 2010s.
Other examples cited by the researchers included ‘to just go’, and ‘to really want’.
Linguists who analysed conversations recorded on people’s smartphones discovered that the split infinitive rate rose from a mere 44 words per million in the early 1990s to 117 per million in the 2010s
Dr Claire Dembry, principal research manager at Cambridge University Press, who helped set up the Spoken British National Corpus 2014 project with experts from the University of Lancaster, said: ‘Learners of English deserve to be taught in a way which is informed by the most up-to-date research into how the language is used in the real world.
‘The rise of the split infinitive is just one example of language phenomena which some commentators might not like, but which are becoming a normal part of everyday speech. Language teaching should reflect these changes.’
The objection to split infinitives is said to be based on comparisons with the structure of Latin. Those in favour of splitting argue that this objection is not relevant to the English language.
Captain Kirk (played by Jeffrey Hunter in 1964’s Star Trek) might well be delighted. Because split infinitives – where an adverb is put between ‘to’ and the verb – are apparently becoming the norm
They also say avoiding a split infinitive can sound clumsy and change the emphasis of what is being said.
A further finding by researchers is that the word ‘marvellous’ is falling out of favour in English usage – and is being replaced by the Americanism ‘awesome’.
Another change imported from America is the habit of starting a sentence with the word ‘like’.
The study found the frequency of this usage of the word soared from 160 per million sentences in the 1990s to 625 per million in the 2010s. The conversations were gathered between 2012 and 2016 by members of the public during everyday encounters with family, friends and colleagues.
Participants included a newly-wed couple reminiscing about their honeymoon and students drinking in their halls. The researchers compared grammar in the conversations with earlier recordings from the 1990s.