# and not pulling / and not to pull (gerund)



## Dante97

Hello, I'm learning how to use the gerund, and I know that after a preposition comes a gerund, but I've been trying to make a few sentences and I wonder if they are gramatically correct, because if I put them in the translator, it says words without sense  

It would be correct to say: 

*Going to the restroom and not pulling the lever is considered bad manners. 

It's considered impolite to go to the restroom and not to pull the lever. *

My mainly doubt is after the conjunction "and" After that, I'm not sure 

I hope you can answer my doubt


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## scbarbara

Hello Dante97

*Going to the restroom and not pulling the lever is considered bad manners.*_ Correct
_*
It's considered impolite to go to the restroom and not( to) pull the lever.  *_Correct  but without "to" sounds better._


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## FromPA

Your sentence is correct.  English gerunds function as nouns, and in you sentence the gerunds "going" and "pulling," taken together as a single concept, represent the subject of the verb "is considered" (passive construction).  If you convert it to active, it would be "[People] consider going to the restroom and not pulling the lever [to be] bad manners."  In this sentence, the compound gerund phrase is the direct object of the verb "consider."  If you change the sentence to be "People consider the practice of going to the restroom and not pulling the lever to be bad manner,"  then the gerunds are the object of the preposition "of."   In all 3 cases, the gerunds function as nouns (subject, direct object, object of a preposition).


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## Dante97

Oh, I see, :O I've got another doubt maybe I've never paid attention to it but. Is "not" always combined with a gerund? if that's the case maybe the second sentence might be* "It's considered impolite to go to the restroom and not pulling the lever"* ?


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## scbarbara

No, it is correct in the infinitve like the first verb but without 'to'.


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## jilar

En inglés usan el gerundio cuando funciona como sustantivo (nombre), y eso corresponde en español a cuando usamos el infinitivo con la misma función.

Comer, ¡qué placer!
Eating, what a pleasure!

Cuando en español usamos el infinitivo sin ser sustantivo en inglés hacen lo mismo, es decir, usarán la forma "to (verb)"
I need to drink = Necesito beber.

Pero, observarás que:
Beber es una necesidad = Drinking is a need.


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## Dante97

I think, I finally understood  _*"Going and Pulling*_ " are the subjects in the sentence and _*"Consider"*_ the verb, and first in a sentence we need the su bject and a verb  (I'm a little slow to understand) , but can I say "Going to the restroom and not pulling the lever is disgusting" The same sentece but instead of "considered" the adjective "Disgusting"


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## djwebb1969

But the word "lever" is horrible here. Do they say "lever" in US English? It is not actually a lever. 

I would say:

Going to the TOILET and FORGETTING TO FLUSH IT is bad manners.


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## FromPA

Dante97 said:


> can I say "Going to the restroom and not pulling the lever is disgusting" The same sentece but instead of "considered" the adjective "Disgusting"



Yes.




djwebb1969 said:


> But the word "lever" is horrible here. Do they say "lever" in US English? It is not actually a lever.
> 
> I would say:
> 
> Going to the TOILET and FORGETTING TO FLUSH IT is bad manners.



We would say "flush the toilet" too, although now the toilets flush themselves.


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## duvija

FromPA said:


> Yes.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> We would say "flush the toilet" too, although now the toilets flush themselves.



Plus you may go to the restroom just to wash your hands (or apply lipstick, as we all do, of course).


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## SevenDays

scbarbara said:


> Hello Dante97
> 
> *Going to the restroom and not pulling the lever is considered bad manners.*_ Correct
> _*
> It's considered impolite to go to the restroom and not( to) pull the lever.  *_Correct  but without "to" sounds better._




Right. The bare infinitive is _concurrent_ with the action being described: _it's considered impolite to go the restroom and not *pull* the lever_. Sometimes "to" is added, perhaps for emphasis or to match the first to-infinitive: _it's considered impolite *to* go to the restroom and not* to* pull the lever_. This is not entirely out of place, because "to" in to-infinitives is prospective and can apply to any time _after _the moment of speaking. Sometimes, the bare infinitive is obligatory; for example, when talking about a specific concurrent action that _happened_ in the past: _I saw him *open* to gate_ (and not, _I saw him to open the gate_). 

Cheers


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## djwebb1969

SevenDays said:


> Right. The bare infinitive is _concurrent_ with the action being described: _it's considered impolite to go the restroom and not *pull* the lever_. Sometimes "to" is added, perhaps for emphasis or to match the first to-infinitive: _it's considered impolite *to* go to the restroom and not* to* pull the lever_. This is not entirely out of place, because "to" in to-infinitives is prospective and can apply to any time _after _the moment of speaking. Sometimes, the bare infinitive is obligatory; for example, when talking about a specific concurrent action that _happened_ in the past: _I saw him *open* to gate_ (and not, _I saw him to open the gate_).
> 
> Cheers



I think you mean "I saw him open THE gate".


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## SevenDays

Right, thank you: _I saw him open the gate._


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## djwebb1969

You can also say "I saw him opening the gate".


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## duvija

As an aside but part of this sentence:
_
it's considered impolite *to* go to the restroom and not* to* pull the lever.

__Would you really say 'not to pull the lever' or more likely 'to not pull the lever'__?_


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## djwebb1969

duvija said:


> As an aside but part of this sentence:
> _
> it's considered impolite *to* go to the restroom and not* to* pull the lever.
> 
> __Would you really say 'not to pull the lever' or more likely 'to not pull the lever'__?_



"Not to pull" is correct English. I think some native speakers of English say things like "to not do", but that strikes me as a grammatical mistake. I'm wondering if this is connected to debates over "split infinitives" - in the 19th century infinitives were not meant to be split: "to do" couldn't take anything in the middle. Whether it is part of that or not - someone will tell you either way - "not to pull" is correct.

As I said, you will hear phrases like "to not do" from native speakers, and I think the best speakers avoid them, but there may be a nuance of difference - or some speakers may feel there is. "Not to do something" is to fail to do something, an act of omission. "To not do something" feels like a more deliberate act, a _conscious_ decision not to do something.


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## Forero

Dante97 said:


> Hello, I'm learning how to use the gerund, and I know that after a preposition comes a gerund, but I've been trying to make a few sentences and I wonder if they are gramatically correct, because if I put them in the translator, it says words without sense
> 
> It would be correct to say:
> 
> *Going to the restroom and not pulling the lever is considered bad manners.
> 
> It's considered impolite to go to the restroom and not to pull the lever. *
> 
> My mainly doubt is after the conjunction "and" After that, I'm not sure
> 
> I hope you can answer my doubt


I am not comfortable with the second _to_ in your second sentence. Going to the restroom and not pulling the lever is meant as one impolite thing, not two.

And if, for some reason, you have to include another _to_, put it before the _not_ to keep it parallel with the other _to_.


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## duvija

Forero gave one answer, but still, 'to not verb...' is perfectly standard English (I had to learn it the hard way). 
Leave those split infinitives happily working as they always did.


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## djwebb1969

duvija said:


> Forero gave one answer, but still, 'to not verb...' is perfectly standard English (I had to learn it the hard way). Leave those split infinitives happily working as they always did.


You're being very emphatic on something you don't know. "To not verb" is not standard English. I spent years as an English subeditor, correcting the English of native speakers before publication, and "to not do something" is indeed something I would have corrected. English has no "Academia Real" unlike Spanish. There is no body that controls the language. Anyone can write a book pronouncing on his views on the standard - and whether anyone accepts those views or not depends on the reputation of the book or author and other factors. For example, books published by the Oxford University Press might have a good reputation. Books published by Harvard might have a good reputation. People could follow some guide written by a famous publishing house or a  good university -- I generally try to follow Fowler's The King's English (1902) -- but, in any case, no university or publishing house is charged with overseeing the language, and so these are just commercial publications that may or may not come to be well-regarded. Your statement "X is standard" can only mean "some source I've read says that X is standard". In the end, if you cleave to standards that are preferred by uneducated people -- if you follow the demotic linguistic forms used by the sort of native speakers who can't read whole books themselves and only write text messages -- you have to face the fact that there will be native speakers (the more educated sort) who will not regard the forms you choose to use as correct. In particular, US English has many features that are difficult to accept, owing to the decline of the education and media systems in that country. I doubt Chicago is an appropriate place to learn English well.


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## duvija

djwebb1969 said:


> You're being very emphatic on something you don't know. "To not verb" is not standard English. I spent years as an English subeditor, correcting the English of native speakers before publication, and "to not do something" is indeed something I would have corrected. English has no "Academia Real" unlike Spanish. There is no body that controls the language. Anyone can write a book pronouncing on his views on the standard - and whether anyone accepts those views or not depends on the reputation of the book or author and other factors. For example, books published by the Oxford University Press might have a good reputation. Books published by Harvard might have a good reputation. People could follow some guide written by a famous publishing house or a good university -- I generally try to follow Fowler's The King's English (1902) -- but, in any case, no university or publishing house is charged with overseeing the language, and so these are just commercial publications that may or may not come to be well-regarded. Your statement "X is standard" can only mean "some source I've read says that X is standard". In the end, if you cleave to standards that are preferred by uneducated people -- if you follow the demotic linguistic forms used by the sort of native speakers who can't read whole books themselves and only write text messages -- you have to face the fact that there will be native speakers (the more educated sort) who will not regard the forms you choose to use as correct. In particular, US English has many features that are difficult to accept, owing to the decline of the education and media systems in that country. I doubt Chicago is an appropriate place to learn English well.



I'll answer by PM


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## SevenDays

djwebb1969 said:


> "Not to pull" is correct English. I think some native speakers of English say things like "to not do", but that strikes me as a grammatical mistake. I'm wondering if this is connected to debates over "split infinitives" - in the 19th century infinitives were not meant to be split: "to do" couldn't take anything in the middle. Whether it is part of that or not - someone will tell you either way - "not to pull" is correct.
> 
> As I said, you will hear phrases like "to not do" from native speakers, and I think the best speakers avoid them, but there may be a nuance of difference - or some speakers may feel there is. "Not to do something" is to fail to do something, an act of omission. "To not do something" feels like a more deliberate act, a _conscious_ decision not to do something.



But you give a very good reason for splitting an infinitive: _to denote a conscious decision not to do something_. Why, then, call "to not verb"_ incorrect_ or_ not standard English?_  Infinitives can be split because "to" is not syntactically attached to the verb; we can represent it as *[*to*]* *[*verb*]*, rather than *[*to verb*]*. Thus, placing an adverb between the two is quite natural and idiomatic: *[*to*]* *[*not*] [*verb*]*. Now, sometimes a particular context demands "not to verb" or "to not verb," but that's a matter of meaning rather than syntax.    

Cheers


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## djwebb1969

SevenDays said:


> Why, then, call "to not verb"_ incorrect_ or_ not standard English?_
> 
> Cheers



It is simply because, although linguistic standards are somewhat arbitrary, we have a literary heritage, and there are certain forms used in classical English literature. The standard means the forms used by the best speakers - the most educated speakers - and not a mathematical average of what is used by native speakers, including the burgeoning ranks of native speakers of English who can't read and write. So the question for me is "what forms were used by Dickens? And Austen? And the Brontes? And Hardy?", rather than "what forms are used by people who work in McDonald's?"

I haven't done a word search of Dickens on this point, and I would be open to persuasion that "to not X" was found in classical literature, if someone could offer any evidence, but no one in this thread has explored that avenue. 

The point is: a lot of native speech is substandard. While people who claim to be linguists often say that native speech is always correct, and the purpose of language is only communication anyway, there is such a thing as good language, and it is not within the realm of linguistics for linguists to attempt to deny it -- any more than it is within the scientific field of a colour chemist to deny that fine art exists, just because all paintings equally contain colour. 

A lot of what passes for linguistics today is the product of the degradation of the academic system, and, in particular, the preference of linguists to play politics instead of sticking to linguistics. The correct response to a linguist to the question "is there such a thing as good use of language?" is to reply that that question has social and cultural aspects that have nothing to do with linguistics; a linguist who sought to intervene in such a discussion ought not to be awarded a PhD. However, it seems some linguists who drag academic standards down in that way do get PhDs, owing to the poor quality viva voces that are now the norm at university.


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## loudspeaker

I think it's important to distinguish between infinitives split by "not" and those split by ordinary adverbs. We don't have to be compelled not to split infinitives with "not" because "not to + verb" sounds quite natural, while "to not + verb" is usually perceived as awkward. 
On the other hand, in the case of an infinitive modified by an ordinary adverb, we have a strong tendency to split the infinitive. Even quite conservative grammar and usage books agree that it is not incorrect. For what it is worth, huge numbers of examples of split infinitives can be found in uncontroversially respectable and widely admired literature. Published examples have appeared in every subsequent century since the 14th. The list of writers who have been happy to use the construction is so extensive as to make it utterly absurd to call it ungrammatical. 
People may frown on it, but it is very common to split infinitives these days. Indeed, in some cases if you don't split it when speaking, you will end up sounding very stuffy, old-fashioned and awkward.


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## djwebb1969

Unfortunately, loudspeaker, there are problems with what you wrote.

First of all, Middle English was a highly chaotic language. Examples of nearly everything (and their opposite) can be found in 14th-century English. If you have to claim a 14th-century example to make your point, you have lost the argument. 

Secondly, are you claiming as a fact that there are no examples of "to not +verb" in 14th century English and every subsequent century since? Your appeal to mere description across centuries falls flat as a result. 

Thirdly, 14th-century English is no one's standard. Neither is 15th- or 16th- or 17th- or 18th-century English anyone's standard.  I have referred to the role of the English classics, largely written in the 19th century, as codifying a conservative standard. (I even implied in post 22 that people might find "to not + verb" in them as a minority choice, but no one here bothered to even search for examples.) It is hard to deny that 19th-century English, which seems rather formal in some aspects and influenced by comparisons of English grammar with Latin and other languages, did not admit all grammatical forms that had been found stretching back to the 14th century. [Do you see what a low-grade conversation this has become?]

Fourthly, it is hard to deny that the English classics attempted to adhere to a rule against splitting the infinitive. Do you deny it?

Fifthly, examples of such usage are very heavily dependent on "to really try". I do admit the rule was artificially introduced, along with "it is I" and the prohibition of double negatives (found in every century since the 14th century!!!!), but I point out that such a rule did exist in the 19th century. Many people still keep to it.

Sixthly, your claim that conservative grammar and usage books now advocate splitting the infinitive contradicts my previous explanation that THERE IS NO BODY IN CHARGE OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE. Anyone may publish a book on anything. Most academics are determined dumber-downers. The universities are dominated by people who argue that children should not be taught to spell!!!!!! (An attack on a child or a variant of fascism, apparently.) Any books that argue you should split the infinitive are clearly not advocating a very conservative standard - as that contradicts the usage of the Classics.


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## Pedro y La Torre

loudspeaker said:


> I think it's important to distinguish between infinitives split by "not" and those split by ordinary adverbs. We don't have to be compelled not to split infinitives with "not" because "not to + verb" sounds quite natural, while "to not + verb" is usually perceived as awkward.
> On the other hand, in the case of an infinitive modified by an ordinary adverb, we have a strong tendency to split the infinitive. Even quite conservative grammar and usage books agree that it is not incorrect. For what it is worth, huge numbers of examples of split infinitives can be found in uncontroversially respectable and widely admired literature. Published examples have appeared in every subsequent century since the 14th. The list of writers who have been happy to use the construction is so extensive as to make it utterly absurd to call it ungrammatical.
> People may frown on it, but it is very common to split infinitives these days. Indeed, in some cases if you don't split it when speaking, you will end up sounding very stuffy, old-fashioned and awkward.



It has always been common to split infinitives in English. There is no good rule whatever forbidding this, the erroneous assumptions of certain confused individuals who imagined that English ought to conform to Latin notwithstanding.


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## djwebb1969

Unfortunately, Pedro, you have not tackled my argument at all. The English of the Classics did not split the infinitive (or show me the example if it did) - that English is, by definition, standard.


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## Pedro y La Torre

The 'English of the Classics' (as you term it) is not, by definition, standard. English already had an agreed standard by the end of the 17th century (cf. _A History of the English Language, Alfred C. Baugh and Thomas Cable, fifth edition, 2002_).

Furthermore:



> There is no clear support for the people who insist that a ‘split infinitive’ is a grammatical error. Even quite conservative grammar and usage books agree that it is not, but citing evidence for the relevant sort of people may be useless: they may not be convinced by any amount of evidence. But for what it is worth, huge numbers of examples of split infinitives can be found in uncontroversially respectable and widely admired literature.



http://www.lel.ed.ac.uk/grammar/splitinf.html


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## djwebb1969

Pedro, we are in a low-grade conversation here. There may have been a standard (probably only a rough standard) at the end of the 17th century, but that was a period before most Classical literature was produced, by which time views of grammarians on various grammatical issues had changed. 

Why should I point out - OK, I'll go right ahead and point it out - the 17th century was not the 19th century. Read that again. And again. In fact, English had a standard in Anglo-Saxon days too. So? So? 

Look! Classical literature plays an important role in determining a standard, which is why the 19th century (not the 17th century) is the linguistic high point of our culture.

As for quoting from an Edinburgh University site, that article is one man's view, and was written by someone who espouses a low-quality standard, embracing the views and usages of the uneducated. An LCD "standard", if you like.


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## Pedro y La Torre

djwebb1969 said:


> Pedro, we are in a low-grade conversation here. There may have been a standard (probably only a rough standard) at the end of the 17th century, but that was a period before most Classical literature was produced, by which time views of grammarians on various grammatical issues had changed.
> 
> Why should I point out - OK, I'll go right ahead and point it out - the 17th century was not the 19th century. Read that again. And again. In fact, English had a standard in Anglo-Saxon days too. So? So?



You are making declarations without any authority whatever to back them up. I'd note that just because you say something is true doesn't make it so. 



djwebb1969 said:


> Look! Classical literature plays an important role in determining a standard, which is why the 19th century (not the 17th century) is the linguistic high point of our culture.
> 
> As for quoting from an Edinburgh University site, that article is one man's view, and was written by someone who espouses a low-quality standard, embracing the views and usages of the uneducated. An LCD "standard", if you like.



So John Dryden, Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, John Donne etc. are not ''linguistic high points'' of English-speaking culture? People should trust your peremptory declarations instead of the views of learned professionals?


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## djwebb1969

Pedro, you are indeed correct to point out that because someone says something that doesn't make it true. However, your problem - and the problem of everyone in this thread - is your claimed appeal to "authority". I'm making claims "without authority". You fail to realise there is no authority. We don't have an Académie Francaise in charge of English. There is no ultimate authority. Anyone can say what he likes.

As for your appeal to Early Modern English writers, including Shakespeare - you FAIL TO REALISE that you are not in fact writing Shakespearean English yourself.

Are you saying that Shakespeare's English is the standard? Don't wriggle off this point or ignore it. I want to show you up here. Is that what you're saying? Early Modern English is a previous stage of the language. You might as well have included Chaucer in your list.

Learned professionals? These are all dumber-downers nowadays. It caused a scandal in England when the press reported that some dumber-downer in university was conducting a course in the language of bus tickets!!!


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## Pedro y La Torre

djwebb1969 said:


> I want to show you up here.



I think this bizarre statement encapsulates what you're all about. I'll be ignoring you henceforth and I'd advise others to do likewise.


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## SevenDays

There's something in your argument, djwebb, that doesn't follow: if there's no authority for all this, then who decided, and on what authority, that the standard to follow is that of the Classics? And, to belabor the point, should we leave Dryden, Donne, Defoe, Burke, etc. off the approved list of _Classics_ because they split infinitives? You dismiss the link provided by Pedro as "one man's opinion," but the same can be said about your claims (or mine, for that matter): _it's just one man's opinion_. Given that we are in a grammar forum, and in order to help visitors to this site, we ought to leave our own opinions and biases aside and focus on objective evidence to decide whether infinitives can or can't be split. English infinitives come in two varieties: _bare infinitives_ and _to-infinitives_. "To" is a syntactic marker of infinitives (more precisely, a subordinator, though that's another topic), but that doesn't make "to" *bound* or *fixed* to the infinitive. Evidence of this is precisely the fact that we can "detach" "to" from the base part (as is also done in _do you want to go to the movies? No, I don't want *to*_, where "to" appears independently, without "go"). There are, of course, some infinitives with "bound" morphemes  that can't be detached (to _glor*ify*_, to _dark*en*_, etc., where the suffixes *-fy* and *-en* must be fixed to the root) but that's not the case with "to." To-infinitives _can_ be split; whether they _should_ be split is another matter, which has to do with context (for example, the ambiguity that can be introduced or avoided when "splitting" the infinitive).


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## jilar

En nuestras escuelas nos enseñan, en teoría, el inglés formal(más correcto) ¿no?
Y voto por "not to (verb)"

Ya Shakespeare lo decía "to be or NOT to be"
Y no dijo: "to be or to NOT be"


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## djwebb1969

SevenDays, the objective evidence is that native speakers do split infinitives, although I think phrases like "to really try" and one or two others may account for the majority of instances. But the purpose of the education system is, not to pursue the lowest common denominator, but to, at least, give native speakers access to the literary heritage. So classical norms are relevant. Dryden, Donne, Defoe, Burke - they are clearly earlier works than Dickens, Austen, the Brontes, Hardy etc, and as such less important in terms of laying down norms. You say it is just my opinion: finally, you have imbibed this point. Yes, it is. There is nothing else. There are only opinions.

Look! We don't have to cleave eternally to 19th-century usages. But there is a difference between a) a descriptivist approach that assigns equal value to the usages of the uneducated (people on the Jeremy Kyle show in England are barely articulate, even though they are native speakers); and b) an approach that allows for gradual development over time, but which takes the views of the educated minority as final.

E.g. the number of people in England who write "could of" is quite large. I don't know the exact percentage, and I have to admit that, in terms of pronunciation, "could of" is quite adequate to represent "could have", and a pronunciation with a clear h in "have" would be a little forced. However, it is still the case that most educated people write "could have", and so I believe that the usages of the uneducated should be assigned lower normative value. 

On split infinitives: if you were a newspaper editor, you would know that split infinitives lead to a large postbag of complaints. The Economist style guide therefore prefers not to split infinitives - see http://www.economist.com/style-guide/split-infinitives where they write "Happy the man who has never been told that it is wrong to split an  infinitive: the ban is pointless. Unfortunately, to see it broken is so  annoying to so many people that you should observe it".

This contradicts the claim that conservative style guides have dropped the issue -- although the wording in the style guide does show a certain reluctance when it comes to observing this principle.

I think for non-native speakers' purposes, they should be aware that "to really try" is one of the few almost universally-split infinitives, and that frequent use of split infinitives elsewhere will strike large numbers of native speakers as wrong. When the postbag of curmudgeonly people complaining about split infinitives dwindles to small numbers, i will argue that the educated have dropped the issue, and the standard has changed.

Similarly, non-native speakers would be on surer ground saying "not to X", which doesn't sound awkward, although "to not X" is probably attested over the centuries. Some sentences can be redrafted. "I eat celery to not get fat" can't be rephrased "I eat celery not to get fat", but can be rephrased "I eat celery in order not to get fat/so as not to get fat" etc


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## djwebb1969

jilar said:


> En nuestras escuelas nos enseñan, en teoría, el inglés formal(más correcto) ¿no?
> Y voto por "not to (verb)"
> 
> Ya Shakespeare lo decía "to be or NOT to be"
> Y no dijo: "to be or to NOT be"



Jilar, tienes razón. Aunque hay ejemplos de "to not X", es más fácil para los extranjeros si no utilizan esta forma. "Not to be" es siempre correcto. Encontrarás "to not be", pero es una forma que puede semblar un poco extraño.


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## duvija

My lowly opinion: Wa -ha- ha- ha
Me recuerda a las discusiones sobre si la RAE tiene razón en todo porque se dedica al español de Madrid o si Latinoamérica con sus 500 millones de almas puede tener alguna opinión...


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## SevenDays

djwebb1969 said:


> SevenDays, the objective evidence is that native speakers do split infinitives, although I think phrases like "to really try" and one or two others may account for the majority of instances. But the purpose of the education system is, not to pursue the lowest common denominator, but to, at least, give native speakers access to the literary heritage. So classical norms are relevant. Dryden, Donne, Defoe, Burke - they are clearly earlier works than Dickens, Austen, the Brontes, Hardy etc, and as such less important in terms of laying down norms. You say it is just my opinion: finally, you have imbibed this point. Yes, it is. There is nothing else. There are only opinions.
> 
> Look! We don't have to cleave eternally to 19th-century usages. But there is a difference between a) a descriptivist approach that assigns equal value to the usages of the uneducated (people on the Jeremy Kyle show in England are barely articulate, even though they are native speakers); and b) an approach that allows for gradual development over time, but which takes the views of the educated minority as final.
> 
> E.g. the number of people in England who write "could of" is quite large. I don't know the exact percentage, and I have to admit that, in terms of pronunciation, "could of" is quite adequate to represent "could have", and a pronunciation with a clear h in "have" would be a little forced. However, it is still the case that most educated people write "could have", and so I believe that the usages of the uneducated should be assigned lower normative value.
> 
> On split infinitives: if you were a newspaper editor, you would know that split infinitives lead to a large postbag of complaints. The Economist style guide therefore prefers not to split infinitives - see http://www.economist.com/style-guide/split-infinitives where they write "Happy the man who has never been told that it is wrong to split an  infinitive: the ban is pointless. Unfortunately, to see it broken is so  annoying to so many people that you should observe it".
> 
> This contradicts the claim that conservative style guides have dropped the issue -- although the comment at that link does show a certain reluctance with observing this principle.
> 
> I think for non-native speakers' purposes, they should be aware that "to really try" is one of the few almost universally-split infinitives, and that frequent use of split infinitives elsewhere will strike large numbers of native speakers as wrong. When the postbag of curmudgeonly people complaining about split infinitives dwindles to small numbers, i will argue that the educated have dropped the issue, and the standard has changed.
> 
> Similarly, non-native speakers would be on surer ground saying "not to X", which doesn't sound awkward, although "to not X" is probably attested over the centuries. Some sentences can be redrafted. "I eat celery to not get fat" can't be rephrased "I eat celery not to get fat", but can be rephrased "I eat celery in order not to get fat/so as not to get fat" etc



Yes, I hear you. The economist calls splitting the infinitive "annoying;" Fowler in The King's English calls it "an ugly thing," but neither, as far as I can tell, calls it "incorrect," "substandard," "non-standard," "uneducated" etc. Now, if a student of English is satisfied when told here that Dickens and Austen never split infinitives, and therefore _you shouldn't do it either_, well, that's fine. But if that same student, the inquisitive lad that he is, asks "is there syntactic justification for this?" we'd be hard pressed to say "yes," because there isn't, now or in the 19th century.

More practically, (taking my cue from the link given by Pedro), if you, as a newspaper editor, come across "The European Union expects inflation to more than double in 2015" (a perfectly constructed sentence), would you really change it to "The EU expects inflation more than to double in 2015" just to keep the infinitive together? Now, we could go with "The EU expects that inflation will more than double in 2015." Either way, we are committing the "splitting" sin: we split "will" (a syntactic marker of future time) from the infinitive "double," just as we split "to" (a syntactic marker of the infinitive) from "double" in _to more than double in 2015_. In any event, I do have Fowler, and Dickens, and Austen, and Defoe, and others, in my library.


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## djwebb1969

I see "more than double" as the verb here. To double, to more-than-double. At least, that is effectively what it is. A phrase functioning as the verb. However, whatever the explanation - you may advance another one - I don't believe any native speakers object to sentences of this type, and as I have consistently stated, it is objections by the educated minority that hold back movement in the standard. In this case, the sentence must be accepted.

There are of course many things that are arguable, and would lead to dispute by conservative speakers. Where you draw the line probably depends on the number of conservative speakers who would complain.


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## jilar

djwebb1969 said:


> I see "more than double" as the verb here. To double, to more-than-double. ...


Hola de nuevo, puede que estemos derivando mucho el hilo, pero la duda me puede ... así que lo pregunto.

More than double ... que sería en español ... más del doble.

¿Lo entiendes como un verbo? ¿incluso lo equiparas a "doblar o duplicar"?
No lo entiendo.
"Más del doble" es un dato, que nos informa que algo va a pasar de "más de dos veces" su valor inicial. Eso no es duplicar, duplicar sería exactamente alcanzar el valor doble.

Por ejemplo: Tengo 2 manzanas. Mañana esas manzanas serán más del doble. No tienen que ser entonces 4, sino, más de ese número. Por ejemplo 5.
Incluso si fuesen 6 valdría la frase (siguen siendo "más del doble"), aunque en la práctica podemos decir, si llegan a ser 6, que se tripiclarán.

Si duplico las 2 manzanas, serán exactamente 4, y no otro número.
En inglés ¿no hay esta misma lógica?

En fin, que no veo cómo "more than double" puede entenderse como un verbo, y en concreto "duplicar" (to double)


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## djwebb1969

Es una frase que funciona como un verbo. "He more-than-doubled it by pouring the contents of the kettle in".


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## jilar

O sea, una cosa como si en español tuviéramos la capacidad de inventar algo como, "masdoblar" siendo verbo:
Yo masdoblo, tú masdoblas, etc...
Masdoblé, masdoblaste, ...
El valor "(se) masdoblará" para el próximo trimestre. 

Increíble, si no lo veo no lo creo . Gracias por la aclaración djwebb1969


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## djwebb1969

You can compare it to phrases like: he didn't quite double it. He very nearly halved it. But things like "very nearly" are normal adverbs, whereas "more than" governs a following word. So you kind of have a cross between "he doubled it", where double is a verb, and "more than double", where double is a a noun or quantity. He doubled it, and more than double can then be joined together as he more than doubled it.


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## k-in-sc

No need to trot out confusing pseudo-explanations. It's just an infinitive that's split for the standard reason that the adverbs wouldn’t work anywhere else in the sentence.


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## SevenDays

jilar said:


> En nuestras escuelas nos enseñan, en teoría, el inglés formal(más correcto) ¿no?
> Y voto por "not to (verb)"
> 
> Ya Shakespeare lo decía "to be or NOT to be"
> Y no dijo: "to be or to NOT be"



Sí, pero ten en cuenta que en aquel entonces Shakespeare no escribía para un lector; lo hacía para una audiencia. La gente no _leía_ obras de teatro; las _escuchaba_ en tiempo real, a poca distancia del escenario. Esto implica que la fraseología de Shakespeare se guiaba en gran parte por el sonido y el ritmo de las palabras. _To be or not to be_ no es precisamente un caso donde Shakespeare no separa el infinitivo _porque los infinitivos no se separan_. Shakespeare en general usa el “to-infinitive” para indicar _purpose/intention_; por lo tanto, “*to be* or not *to be*” (con el “propósito/intención” que denota “to be”) es mucho más expresivo y rítmico que “to be or to not be” o “be or not be.” Y también cabe mencionar que el  “sonido” de “to be” tiene eco en los infinitivos “to die” y “to sleep” que aparecen luego en el soliloquio.

Saludos


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## djwebb1969

SevenDays said:


> Sí, pero ten en cuenta que en aquel entonces Shakespeare no escribía para un lector; lo hacía para una audiencia. La gente no _leía_ obras de teatro; las _escuchaba_ en tiempo real, a poca distancia del escenario. Esto implica que la fraseología de Shakespeare se guiaba en gran parte por el sonido y el ritmo de las palabras. _To be or not to be_ no es precisamente un caso donde Shakespeare no separa el infinitivo _porque los infinitivos no se separan_. Shakespeare en general usa el “to-infinitive” para indicar _purpose/intention_; por lo tanto, “*to be* or not *to be*” (con el “propósito/intención” que denota “to be”) es mucho más expresivo y rítmico que “to be or to not be” o “be or not be.” Y también cabe mencionar que el  “sonido” de “to be” tiene eco en los infinitivos “to die” y “to sleep” que aparecen luego en el soliloquio.
> 
> Saludos



It has nothing to do with any of this. "To not be" sounds strange.  "Not to be" fits the iambic pentameter for declamatory purposes - but you would have to scan his works for other examples of "to not be" - have you done that? I haven't done that, and so I'm asking you for your results.


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## djwebb1969

A good way of searching for early modern English forms is to search the King James Bible (1611) at kjvbible.net

There are no examples in the whole Bible of "to not". There are numerous example of "not to", although not all of them are relevant. I found this in *Ezekiel 23:48*   Thus will I cause lewdness to cease out of the land, that all women may be taught *not to do* after your lewdness.


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## loudspeaker

Avoiding a split infinitive in everyday colloquial English is probably best illustrated with an example, which can also change the emphasis of what’s being said. 
The sentence:

You really have to watch him. (It’s important that you watch him) 

doesn’t have quite the same meaning as:

You have to really watch him. (You have to watch him very closely) 

It absolutely changes the emphasis of what’s being said. 

Cheers


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## SevenDays

djwebb1969 said:


> It has nothing to do with any of this. "To not be" sounds strange.  "Not to be" fits the iambic pentameter for declamatory purposes - but you would have to scan his works for other examples of "to not be" - have you done that? I haven't done that, and so I'm asking you for your results.



We are talking at cross purposes. I made reference to "rhythm" not "meter;" the same line can be written in two different ways, maintaining the same iambic pentameter, and have strikingly different rhythm. Meter is a pattern of measurement; it focuses on syllables. Rhythm is harmony, it focuses on how words flow together. But you are actually making my point. "To not be" sounds strange, but not because Shakespeare splits the infinitive; it sounds strange because "to not be" interrupts the rhythm (not the meter) of the sentence. The rhythm in the line _*contrasts *_one "to be" with another "to be" (two "to-infinitives" that denote _purpose, intent_), that's why he puts "or not" between them.  Now, I haven't scanned Shakespeare's works, and don't intend to (who has the time?), but in Sonnet 142 he does split the infinitive: _Thy pity may deserve *to* pitied *be*_. Read it as "to be pitied" and you lose rhythm and thus expresiveness. Wikipedia says this is the only time he does so. I wouldn't know one way or the other, but I take their word for it. Anyway, we've taken this thread into an entirely different direction, so I'll stop.
Cheers


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## djwebb1969

SevenDays, "to pitied be" is not an example of what is at dispute over split infinitives. It means "to be pitied" and is simply a poetic mode of expression. It has nothing to do with the placement of adverbs qualifying the verb.

Meter in English is about rhythm. It is not about "measurement" of long and short syllables. The iambic pentameter in Shakespeare is about the stressed syllables coming in between unstressed syllable. There is no measurement of syllable length. English is not Ancient Greek.

to BE or NOT to BE

The pentameter isn't perfectly adhered to in Shakespeare. He can drop it occasionally or for effect. The rest of the sentence is: "that is the question", but it would be forced to read it as "that IS the QUESTion". 

You are right to say the first "to be" contrasts with the second "to be", but there are no examples in Shakespeare of any other wording (and not all of Shakespeare is in iambic pentameter).

Listening to myself speaking yesterday, I noted one "to not X", and I realised that if you know what you are going to say you would say "not to X", e.g I told you not to do that. But in a podcast if you're not sure what comes next, and are making it up as you go along, you would often have a "to", followed by something you haven't decided on yet, and then you could have a "not". Eg. I wanted to ask you to... er... not do that. In other words, "to not X" may characterise disfluent speech.

I think the fact that Shakespeare has ZERO instances of "to not" and that the King James Bible has ZERO instances of "to not" tells its own story -- albeit one people in this thread are determined not to notice.


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## djwebb1969

At rhymezone.com you can search Shakespeare (note: SevenDays has not realised Shakespeare is early modern English, and forms found in Shakespeare are not indicative of anyone's norms), and there is not a single instance in his works of "to not". There are 344 examples of "not to". I couldn't post them all here as the total was 98321 characters, which is above the maximum length of 10,000 characters. Not all of them are relevant, but see the list at http://www.rhymezone.com/r/ss.cgi?q=not+to+&mode=k (the 2nd from the top is an example of an irrelevant "not to").


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## Bevj

Moderator's note
This thread is getting well bogged down in a topic other than the original one.
Time to close it.
Bevj
Moderator


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