United country–split infinitives?
Picking up on Father Imbelli’s preceding post re the Obama-Roberts “do-over,” neuro-psycho-linguist Steven Pinker has an op-ed in today’s NYT, “Oaf of Office” (bad title) which posits that the original problem stemmed from Chief Justice Roberts’ grammatical pedantry. (Some might trace that to his “strict interpretation” judicial philosophy–others to an overly-scrupulous Catholic education?) In fact, Roberts has been known to “correct” direct quotations for grammar–he took the “ain’t” out of Dylan’s line “When you ain’t got nothing, you got nothing to lose.”
But Pinker’s larger target is the “fetishizing” of the proscription against split infinitives:
Language pedants hew to an oral tradition of shibboleths that have no basis in logic or style, that have been defied by great writers for centuries, and that have been disavowed by every thoughtful usage manual. Nonetheless, they refuse to go away, perpetuated by the Gotcha! Gang and meekly obeyed by insecure writers.
Among these fetishes is the prohibition against “split verbs,” in which an adverb comes between an infinitive marker like “to,” or an auxiliary like “will,” and the main verb of the sentence. According to this superstition, Captain Kirk made a grammatical error when he declared that the five-year mission of the starship Enterprise was “to boldly go where no man has gone before”; it should have been “to go boldly.” Likewise, Dolly Parton should not have declared that “I will always love you” but “I always will love you” or “I will love you always.”
Any speaker who has not been brainwashed by the split-verb myth can sense that these corrections go against the rhythm and logic of English phrasing. The myth originated centuries ago in a thick-witted analogy to Latin, in which it is impossible to split an infinitive because it consists of a single word, like dicere, “to say.” But in English, infinitives like “to go” and future-tense forms like “will go” are two words, not one, and there is not the slightest reason to interdict adverbs from the position between them.
Though the ungrammaticality of split verbs is an urban legend, it found its way into The Texas Law Review Manual on Style, which is the arbiter of usage for many law review journals. James Lindgren, a critic of the manual, has found that many lawyers have “internalized the bogus rule so that they actually believe that a split verb should be avoided,” adding, “The Invasion of the Body Snatchers has succeeded so well that many can no longer distinguish alien speech from native speech.”
I’ll readily admit to grammatical insecurity, especially now that I rarely have the blessed backstop of a rimful of newsroom copy editors. But I have to agree with Pinker on this one. I think even Safire may have caved here, though I’m not sure. Safire does acknowledge a development of doctrine where language is concerned. I’m just glad that Obama was successfully re-consecrated with the correct ritual formula so that the sedevacantists of our civil religion will have one less conspiracy to flog…
We have experts here–Grant, Paul?
Good work on split infinitives. Pinker has it so right. But what about the fact that Obama will now restore science to its rightful place in the US. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/22/us/politics/22science.html?_r=1
Was it the Gang of Five who encouraged
Bush to return to the Middle Ages? Some one joked in 2001 when W got elected that we can say goodbye to a long period of peace and prosperity. Science might be added to that farewell.
The beautiful thing about this weird event is that it had the potential to feed conspiracy theories at both extremes. E.g., was Roberts trying, consciously or unconsciously, to “correct” the oath… Or was he intentionally screwing it up so as to invalidate the inauguration of a onetime adversary? Now there’s nothing to fantasize about. (Unless of course the whole do-over story is just a ruse…)
I had a thorough drilling in grammar in my Catholic grade-school days, and I owe my sometime career as a copyeditor to the vigilant IHMs. But I thank God they didn’t waste time on superstitions about split infinitives or ending a sentence with a preposition. Those phony rules give grammar a bad name!
Toles of course captures the spirit of the conspiracy:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/opinions/cartoonsandvideos/toles_main.html?hpid=opinionsbox1
Aha! I knew it! Foiled again, Roberts!
Does the locution “to go” constitute one word or two? Or do we have a compound that our orthographical practice does not acknowledge. How about “rain drop”? One word–an unacknowledged compound–or two? And notice the use of “zu” with infinitives in our sister language, German. The other example given in the pattern “will do” is quite different. It consists of finite verb “will” + infinitive “do”. No compound there. But conservatives must face the fact of linguistic change. If “I was like” is equivalent in force to “I said”, what can we expect “going forward”. The linguistic conservative must recognize that no one “has her back”. And so it goes. (Never begin a sentence with “and”?)
I’m cottoning to David’s sedevacantist theory. If defective baptismal formulae render the sacrament invalid, then surely defective administration of oaths similarly fail to “take”.
Of course, this raises the question, who was actually in charge on Tuesday? Was Vice President Biden sworn in yet? (Do they even do that to Vice Presidents?) If not, I suppose the presidency reverted for those 30 hours or so to Speaker Pelosi.
Joseph: “raindrop” is “closed up” (as they say) in the American Heritage Dictionary and Merriam-Webster’s. So there’s one problem solved. (next on my priority list: “Web site.”)
Jim — Biden was sworn in before Obama. But that doesn’t necessarily mean he’d get the authority — I have no idea what weird provisions the law might make! However, I also heard that Obama was officially prez as of noon — during the pre-oath musical interlude — regardless of what happened afterward. So who knows.
I go with Jeffrey Toobin, by Amendment, Obama was in fact President before the oath, at noon on Innaugaration day.
Think Obama’s a stickler for formalities though.
PS I love the word “sedevacntist” – maybe Safire can write a piece on it in his Sunday NYT Magazine column.
“When you got nothing, you got nothing to lose”
http://www.bobdylan.com/#/songs/rolling-stone
Does this render Mr. Pinker’s argument irrelevant?
What I want to know is this: In what possible context would Chief Justice Roberts quote Bob Dylan?
Clearly, the moral of the story is, ‘When wording counts, have the text before you in written form’. I seem to recall reading that as a young Parliamentarian, Churchill rose to make one of his first major speeches (may have been the very first) and froze up. After that, he always brought the text with him.
On a MUCH more modest level, one time I was leading a group of juvenile detention facility residents in a prayer service. I invited them all to pray the Lord’s Prayer together. And at some point about half-way through the prayer, I lost my place, forgot the words, and couldn’t find my way back for the life of me. To make matters worse, they were watching me like a hawk, in part because many of them didn’t know the prayer very well (this being, at the most basic level, a gathering of contemporary teens) so they were leaning on my to lead them through it.
There’s something about public speaking.
Odd development: Bob Dylan’s website might actually have the lyrics WRONG. I just listened to the original album version as well as a live version from Before the Flood and both of them have the “ain’t” in it. What’s going on here?
God point, Mollie. How about “bathroom tile”, one word or two?
Bob Nunz
In Latin “sede vacante” means something like “the See having no occupant” and the reference is to the Holy See, as it is called. A “sedevacantista” holds, as I understand it, that the Holy See has no occupant and has had none since Pius XII. The premise is that all following Popes have been heretics and no heretic can be a Pope.
“good” not “God” is what I ment to write above
Jean Raber and Adeodatus:
In response to your questions:
Far be it from me to profess any expertise in the law. But in fact the web site does bear a copyright notice. Absent any evidence to the contrary, we can assume that both the written version on the website and the recorded version that we’ve all heard way (WAY) too many times are both intellectual property that is protected by copyright provison. With all due respect to Professor Long, it isn’t clear to me why Justice Roberts’ clerks should have deferred to the recording rather than the version on the web site. It seems as likely to me that when Dylan composed the song and copyrighted the lyrics, the words were as they appear on the web site. And then, in the recording studio, he improvised a little bit.
Beyond that, of course, it goes without saying that Roberts does the human race a favor by scrubbing Dylan’s lyrics of faux-folkie affectations. Would that someone would do the same to abominations like “a-changin’”. And while we’re at it, would someone please give him a voice lesson!
About the swearing I – one of the interesting analyses of language uses is of what the language philosopherscall “performatve utterances” A performative utterances not only •Says• Something it •Does•?something. For instance, when asked in the right circumstances by a proper person, Do you take this woman to be your lawfully wife?” and you answer “I do”, the very saying is a doing – it turns you I to her husband. Some performative utterances •Bind• Us in some way. For instanc, when the husband promises to love and cherish his wife, he has instituted an obligation to her. (I do wonder about some of these do-it-yourself rituals some young people come up wiith these days. Sometimes they seem to be just poetry readings.
It seems to this non-lawyer that when Obama took the oath of office he bound himself to the people in a special, moral way. Did it also have the effect of making him apresidemt? It seems not. It was the people who made him preside t by their votes. This to me was the great beauty of this election — we made an Africanerican our President.
Could the Constitution have stipulated that the oath was also necessary? Sure. But it seems that it didn’t.
Gene P., thank you for answering Jean’s question — it’s been on my mind too. Here’s what I really want to know, though: if Roberts were really so uptight about grammar that he felt the need to “correct” the lyric, why would he leave it at “When you got nothing, you got nothing to lose”? Why not go all the way and make it “When you have nothing, you have nothing to lose”? Better yet, why not just quote the Stones and say, “You can’t always get what you want”? (I say that’s how he should end every opinion he writes from now on.)
Could there be an even more simple explanation for Roberts’ mild screw-up? Having recited the oath in private many times, he was confident it was banked perfectly in his memory only to see it wasn’t at the swearing-in. I’m curious if he recited it from memory again the next morning, or had a written copy in front of him.
In any event, now that it’s been revealed that the audio for the classical perfomance had been pre-recorded, Roberts might feel relieved that his bit wasn’t the only one imperfection of the inauguration.
Apropos of Roberts and the musicians, a blog at WP makes a funny point (see “Yo Yo Milli Vanilli”):
“And so, it is rather shocking to find out, days later, that the music was prerecorded. Clearly, that was the right decision from a production standpoint. John Roberts should have done the same thing with the oath.”
http://blog.washingtonpost.com/achenblog/
Ooh, me too! I just did it over here.
Ooh, me too! I just did it over here.
—–
Funny, isn’t it? After this and singing (from a young girl) at the Olympics opening ceremony in Beijing, it wouldn’t surprise me to see more pre-recorded music at national and international events in the future.
Last night I saw on Tonigh Show a clip of Biden joking about the swearing in at a press conference with Obama… It was Biden being Biden, but Obama was visibly concerned and signalled his VP to stop. The scene is priceless, enough to prompt politico put Biden in a list of top ten Democrats the new president should keep an eye out for. The list has both sensible and odd choices, but there it is.
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0109/17775.html
Might it be the case that Obama picked Biden partly because he knew Biden would be the comical foil for his gravity? Unlikely. But it’s safe to predict that the numero uno target of most late-night jokes isn’t going to be the POTUS but his VP.
About Roberts’ screw-ups. He tells this story on himself.
He argued a case before the Supreme Court, but he lost it 9 to 0. His irate client called him in a fury, asking “How could you POSSIBLY lose 9 to 0?” Roberts replied, “Because there are only 9 justices.”