[Gllug] There are no regular verbs in English (seriously OT!!)

[David Damerell]

On Thursday, 3 Jul 2003, Doug Winter wrote:
>On Thu 19 Jun Gordon Joly wrote:
>>The "To boldly go..." debate (split infinitive) is an example of a
>>rule from a dead language (Latiin) being applied to living, breathing,
>>English by pseudo-academics, innit?
>No it's not.  IIRC infinitives in latin cannot be split, since they are
>a single word, so how can it be a rule from Latin?

Not to interject some facts into the discussion, but Mr. Joly is
largely correct; the split infinitive "rule" is the result of
Victorian linguists feeling that since infinitives cannot be split in
Latin, they should not be in English.

>Anyway, you're allowed to split infinitives now, it says so in the OED.

The hell with the OED; Fowler says it's OK.

-- 
David Damerell <damerell at chiark.greenend.org.uk> Distortion Field!

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