Editing Split infinitive (section)

=== Old and Middle English ===
In [[Old English]], infinitives were single words ending in ''-n'' or ''-an'' (comparable to modern [[Dutch language|Dutch]] and [[German language|German]] ''-n'', ''-en''). [[Gerund]]s were formed using ''to'' followed by a verbal noun in the [[dative case]], which ended in ''-anne'' or ''-enne'' (e.g., ''tō cumenne'' = "coming, to come").<ref name=Bryant>{{cite journal | last = Bryant |first = M. M. | title = The Split Infinitive | journal = College English | volume = 8 | issue = 1 |date=October 1946|pages = 39–40 | doi = 10.2307/370450 | publisher = National Council of Teachers of English | jstor = 370450}}</ref> In [[Middle English]], the bare infinitive and the gerund coalesced into the same form ending in ''-(e)n'' (e.g., ''comen'' "come"; ''to comen'' "to come"). The "to" infinitive was not split in Old or Early Middle English.

The first known example of a split infinitive in English, in which a pronoun rather than an adverb splits the infinitive, is in [[Layamon]]'s ''[[Brut (Layamon)|Brut]]'' (early 13th century):

:''and he cleopede him to; alle his wise cnihtes.''
:'''''for to him reade''''';<ref name="Brook1963">{{cite book |editor1-last=Brook |editor1-first=G. L. |editor2-last=Leslie |editor2-first=R. F. |author=Layamon |title=British Museum Ms. Cotton Caligula A. IX and British Museum Ms. Cotton Otho C. XIII |publisher=Oxford University Press | date=1993 |orig-year=Published in print 1963-1978 for the [[Early English Text Society]] by the Oxford University Press, original author Layamon, {{fl.|1200}}<!--|page=287 -->at=Line 5221 |url=https://quod.lib.umich.edu/c/cme/LayOtho?rgn=main;view=fulltext |access-date=2018-06-20 }}</ref><ref name=Nagle>Nagle (1994). Nagle takes his historical data from {{cite book | last = Visser | first = F. T. | orig-year=1973|year = 1997 | title = An Historical Syntax of the English Language | location = Leiden | publisher = Brill | isbn = 90-04-03273-8}}</ref>
::And he called to him all his wise knights / to him advise.

This may be a poetic inversion for the sake of meter, and therefore says little about whether Layamon would have felt the construction to be syntactically natural. However, no such reservation applies to the following prose example from [[John Wycliffe]] (14th century), who often split infinitives:<ref>{{cite book | last = Partridge | first = Astley Cooper | year = 1969 | title = Tudor to Augustan English: A Study in Syntax and Style from Caxton to Johnson | publisher = Deutsch | page = 214 | isbn = 9780233960920 | url = https://books.google.com/books?id=wgIrAAAAIAAJ&q=%22split+infinitive%22 | access-date = 2013-03-03}}</ref>
:''For this was gret unkyndenesse, '''to this manere treten''' there brother.''<ref name="Hall1882">Quoted by {{cite journal | last = Hall |first = Fitzedward | title = On the Separation, by a Word or Words, of to and the Infinitive Mood | journal = American Journal of Philology | volume = 3 | issue = 9 | year = 1882|pages = 17–24 | doi = 10.2307/287307 | publisher = The Johns Hopkins University Press | jstor = 287307}}; [[William Strunk Jr.|Strunk, William]] & [[E. B. White|White, E.B.]], ''[[The Elements of Style]]'', fourth edition, Longman, 2000, p. 58, also speak of 14th-century examples.</ref>
::For this was great unkindness, to in this manner treat their brother.