WEBVTT

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[bright music]

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<v ->Today we're gonna talk about split infinitives.</v>

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First of all, what is an infinitive?

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It's a form of the verb that has to in front of it.

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And it doesn't indicate anything about tense or

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about person or number.

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And example of an infinitive is to split.

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Now the reason that splitting infinitives is

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looked down upon, is that in past centuries,

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grammarians tried to lay Latin grammar

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on the top of English.

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In Latin, infinitives are only one word.

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So there's no possible way to split them.

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So for some reason, somebody decided that English

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should not split infinitives either.

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An example of a split infinitive?

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Very famous one,

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<v ->[Mary And William] "To boldly go</v>

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where no man has gone before".

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<v ->They could have said boldly to go</v>

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where no man has gone before,

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or to go boldly where no man has gone before.

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They split an infinitive on Star Trek.

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Does that mean we have to split infinitives?

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No, but it doesn't mean we can't if we don't feel like it.

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So, I'm going to show you how to split an infinitive.

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Here we have an example, to predict.

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Now suppose you want to say, to accurately predict,

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you get out your infinitive splitter,

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[bright music]

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and place the point of it between to and predict,

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and tap [tapping] voila,

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there's now room to insert an adverb,

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and we're going to put in accurately,

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to accurately predict.

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That looks beautiful.

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Now I don't have any problem

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with a writer splitting an infinitive.

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It's a matter of emphasis.

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The split infinitive is legitimate now.

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Certainly ever since Star Trek.