Today's non sequitur

Tue Mar 5 16:41:06 UTC 2013

No, it's actually just another instance of nasty things happening--false harassment accusations and split infinitives. What's next? Split ends? 

Geoffrey S. Nathan 
Faculty Liaison, C&IT 
and Professor, Linguistics Program 
http://blogs.wayne.edu/proftech/ 
+1 (313) 577-1259 (C&IT) 

----- Original Message -----

> From: "Laurence Horn" <laurence.horn at YALE.EDU>
> To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
> Sent: Tuesday, March 5, 2013 11:27:44 AM
> Subject: Re: Today's non sequitur

> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
> -----------------------
> Sender: American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster: Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at YALE.EDU>
> Subject: Re: Today's non sequitur
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------

> On Mar 5, 2013, at 10:34 AM, Jonathan Lighter wrote:

> > From Yahoo! News: The Week:
> >
> > The rule against splitting infinitives — that is, putting an adverb
> > between
> > the word *to* and a verb — was pretty much made up out of whole
> > cloth by
> > early 19-century grammarians, apparently because they felt the
> > proper model
> > for English was Latin, and in Latin, infinitive-splitting is
> > impossible.
> > However, English is not Latin, and infinitives have been profitably
> > split
> > by many great writers, from Hemingway ("But I would come back to
> > where it
> > pleases me to live; to really live") to Gene Rodenberry ("to boldly
> > go
> > where no man has gone before"). It's okay to boldly do it.
> >
> > SEE MORE: Prostitute claims she made up accusations against Sen.
> > Robert
> > Menendez.
> >
> >
> I hadn't been following the Menendez case--did it involve her
> claiming he split an infinitive and him denying it? One of those he
> said/she said affairs?

> LH

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