Editing Split infinitive (section)

=== Types ===
In the modern language, splitting usually involves a single adverb coming between the verb and its marker. Very frequently, this is an emphatic adverb, for example:
:''I need you all '''to really pull''' your weight.''
:''I'm '''gonna (going to) totally pulverise''' him.''

Sometimes it is a negation, as in the self-referential joke:

:''Writers should learn '''to not split''' infinitives''.

However, in modern colloquial English, almost any adverb may be found in this syntactic position, especially when the adverb and the verb form a close syntactic unit (really-pull, not-split).

Compound split infinitives, i.e., infinitives split by more than one word, usually involve a pair of adverbs or a multi-word adverbial:
:''We are determined '''to completely and utterly eradicate''' the disease''.
:''He is thought '''to almost never have''' made such a gesture before''.
:''This is a great opportunity '''to once again communicate''' our basic message''.

Examples of non-adverbial elements participating in the split-infinitive construction seem rarer in Modern English than in Middle English. The pronoun ''all'' commonly appears in this position:
:''It was their nature '''to all hurt''' one another''.<ref name="Burchfield1996">Quoted from P. Carey (1981) in {{cite book | last1 = Burchfield | first1 = R. W. | last2 = Fowler | first2 = H. W. | year = 1996 | title = The New Fowler's Modern English Usage | publisher = Oxford University Press | page = [https://archive.org/details/newfowlersmodern00fowl/page/738 738] | isbn = 0-19-869126-2 | url = https://archive.org/details/newfowlersmodern00fowl/page/738 }}</ref>
and may even be combined with an adverb:
:''I need you '''to all really pull''' your weight.''
However an object pronoun, as in the [[#Old and Middle English|Layamon example]] above, would be unusual in modern English, perhaps because this might cause a listener to misunderstand the ''to'' as a preposition:
: *''And he called to him all his wise knights '''to him advise'''''.

While, structurally, acceptable as poetic formulation, this would result in a [[garden path sentence]], particularly evident if the indirect object is omitted:

{| class="wikitable" bgcolor="white"
|-
!Sentence
!Initial likely partial parse
!Final parse
|-
|*''And he called all his wise knights '''to him advise'''''.
|And he called all his knights to come to him...
|And he called all his knights, so that they might advise him
|}

Other parts of speech would be very unusual in this position. However, in verse, poetic inversion for the sake of meter or of bringing a rhyme word to the end of a line often results in abnormal syntax, as with Shakespeare's split infinitive (''to pitied be'', cited above), in fact an inverted passive construction in which the infinitive is split by a [[past participle]]. Presumably, this would not have occurred in a prose text by the same author.

When multiple infinitives are linked by a conjunction, the particle ''to'' tends to be used only once at the beginning of the sequence: ''to eat, drink, and be merry''. In this case, the conjunction and any other words that fall between the ''to'' and the final infinitive have seldom been deemed to create a split infinitive, and almost always have been considered uncontroversial. Examples include "We pray you '''to proceed&nbsp;/ And justly and religiously unfold'''..." (Shakespeare, ''Henry V'', Act II, scene 9) and "...she is determined '''to be independent, and not live''' with aunt Pullet" ([[George Eliot]], ''[[The Mill on the Floss]]'', volume VI, chapter I).<ref>{{cite book | last = Visser |first = F. Th. | title = An Historical Syntax of the English Language, Part 2: Syntactical Units with One Verb | volume = 2 | year = 1966 | publisher = Brill | pages = 1039 | url = https://books.google.com/books?id=ObA3AAAAIAAJ&pg=PA1039 | access-date = 2018-09-10}}</ref>