A DIFFERING VIEW: Rosen misleads readers in his grammar lesson

The Rocky

Thursday, February 7, 2008

Mike Rosen is quite correct (“The trouble with English,” Feb. 1) that there is nothing grammatically incorrect about a “split infinitive,” despite what Mrs. Wellington used to say in my seventh-grade English class, back in the prehistoric era when teachers still believed that it was a good idea for children to be taught the basics of English grammar.

However, the example he generously allows himself, “have lately taken,” is not an infinitive of any kind, just a verb form containing more than one word, and an adverb in its usual and customary place after the first of them.

An infinitive expresses the part of the meaning of a verb that is independent of the person, number, gender and tense, as you likely know if there was a Mrs. Wellington in your past. Like “to take,” or “to be,” as infinitives are written in English. In Latin, they're single words — esse — whence cometh the peculiar idea that they shouldn’t be split in English.

The rest of Rosen's column illustrates another peculiar phenomenon — that people who know nothing at all about linguistics assume they do because they speak and write a language, and in absence of actual knowledge they just make stuff up.

There are principles that govern the alternation of “a” and “an,” but they’re phonetic, not grammatical as Rosen describes them. “A hot dog,” but “an uncooked hot dog” and “a delighted heir.”

Rosen writes, “... sports jargon is often granted special exemption from the rules of grammar.” Granted by whom, hmmm? I’m surprised he didn’t complain about the “passive tense.”

I’d probably say “four RBIs,” as Rosen prefers, but whether and where to put the “s” in an acronym is very idiosyncratic, and often different for abbreviations.

Rosen is correct that pronouncing height as “hithe” instead of “hite” is wrong, but so is explaining why by recourse to “weight,” which would argue just as cogently for “hayt.”

Stick to politics, Mike. It’s less problematic, because nobody knows what they’re talking about.

Linda Seebach, a former Rocky editorial writer, is a resident of Northfield, Minn.