Split Infinitives?
For the Conjugate section, do there happen to be some split infinitives. For example, how would you say "to have moved" or "to slowly eat"? I tried searching in the Conjugate section, but it said that it wasn't in the dictionary. Any suggestions? Or do you think that I should just look it up in translate?
2 Answers
Hola otra vez, llamalovers.
Of course, you can enter eat or to eat (just remove the adverb) in the Conjugate section if you want. If this is helpful.
A better approach might be to use the Translate section first. Let’s say, for instance, that you forgot the Spanish word for eat. Enter it in the Translate section and you get comer. Then enter this result, comer, in the Conjugate section. I mean, you’re a native English speaker, so you don’t need help with I eat, you eat, etc., anyway, right? It might be nice to see how it’s set up though.
To have moved is not a so-called split infinitive. Have is a helping verb and moved is a past participle, not a base form verb. So, if it is helpful, you can enter move or to move in the Translate section, and, well, you get the pattern.
Try to keep your entries in the Conjugate section to one word (the base form of the verb), or the word to with the base form. An adverb may be translated, but not conjugated.
A little more on “split infinitives”:
The concept of the “split infinitive” is a great example of complete nonsense. Total silliness. It comes out of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century prescriptivism. Some so-called experts tried to make English more like Latin. (It was a big deal for a long time.) In Latin—and in one of its offshoots, Spanish—an infinitive can’t be “split” because it’s one word! So a few old fogeys who knew nothing about linguistics or comparative grammar got together and made up some new “rules.” English should be more like Latin, they said. Latin, a supposedly perfectly structured lingua franca that nobody spoke outside of some churches.
In English, infinitives happen to have two words, the particle or preposition to and the unconjugated (not with a person: I eat, you eat, she eats), or base form of the verb. So these dudes (Robert Lowth and Lindley Murray in particular) told regular folks to never put ? (“split infinitive” deliberate here) an adverb between these two words. ¡Qué locura!
English is not Latin! It has a radically different structure. So why try to make it like Latin?
If an English teacher harps on about not “splitting” an infinitive, it’s because most people with a B.A. in English had zero semesters of linguistics. It’s because they don’t know what they’re talking about. They’re merely blindly following bogus rules without any knowledge that they’re bogus, or why they are bogus, without any historical knowledge of the development of the language. (Not all of the old rules are bogus, by the way.)
But don’t “split” an infinitive? Nonsense. Split ’em up. Let ’em rip.
In any event, I wouldn’t worry about “split infinitives” too much when you’re studying. Working with online translators, that is. Of course, online translators are nowhere near sophisticated enough to do a great job, generally speaking. The reason for this is that languages are much more complex than computer code.
I hope that this helps a bit!
—Brian
No, no conjugation tool is going to handle split infinitives. If you want a conjugation, you´ll have to pick the verb you want and run it alone. The translator is better, but often chokes on English infinitives, yielding a result of para where there should often be no word rendered. For those more advanced phrases, you´ll have to learn the grammar. Plus split infinitives like ¨to eat slowly¨ and not great English. A lot of English teachers will rail against that and say it should be to eat slowly, comer lentamente, or, comer despacio. To have moved, is too advanced for me, so I can´t help there.
