Separated infinitive

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A separated infinitive in the English language is a grammatical construction in which a word or phrase - usually an adverb or an adverbial phrase - is between to and the pure infinitive verb form (i.e. the basic form of the verb). The construction is particularly noteworthy because of a controversy as to whether it is grammatically permissible at all.

A famous example of this is a quote from the Star Trek television series : “ to boldly go where no man has gone before”. Here the presence of the adverb boldly between the two parts of the infinitive to and go causes a separate infinitive. Such a construction can often be avoided by placing the intervening words after the verb or in front of the to : “to go boldly where no man has gone before” or “boldly to go where no man has gone before”. However, these two phrases do not have the same meaning - the former associates boldness with the way of walking, while the latter associates boldness with the perfect act of walking, "where no man has gone before".

From a descriptive linguistics perspective , separate infinitives are common in most of the variants in English. However, their status as part of the standard language is controversial. In the 19th century, various standard works of English grammar attempted to introduce a prescriptive rule that separated infinitives should not be used in English. Most linguists of the past 100 years, however, have argued that the construction of the separated infinitive can sometimes be helpful in expressing a certain meaning more precisely - as in the case of "to boldly go".

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