“To boldly go where no man has gone before”: how iconic is the Star Trek split infinitive?
-
Patricia Ronan
and
Gerold Schneider
Abstract
“To boldly go where no man has gone before”, popularized by the science fiction series Star Trek, has provided an iconic example for the use of split infinitives. From its introduction, the series may have paved the way for the broader use of split infinitives in contemporary, informal English in spite of prescriptive grammars shunning the structure. The current qualitative and quantitative study is based on the general diachronic Corpus of Historical American English (COHA) and a specific telecinematic corpus (TV Corpus). It aims to trace genre influence in the use of split infinitives in sci-fi and television discourses. It asks whether the use of split infinitives in informal genres can be correlated with its prominent use in the Star Trek series. The current study finds that both raw and relative frequencies increase in the wake of Star Trek, as well as the probability of choice. Yet the clearest influence from Star Trek stems from the spread of the iconic to boldly go phrase.
References
Adams, Michael. 2014. Slang in new media: A case study. In Julie Coleman (ed.), Global English slang: Methodologies and perspectives, 175–186. London: Routledge.Search in Google Scholar
Bednarek, Monika. 2018. Language and television series: A linguistic approach to TV dialogue. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.10.1017/9781108559553Search in Google Scholar
Calle-Martin, Javier. 2015. The split infinitive in Middle English. NOWELE 68(2). 227–250. https://doi.org/10.1075/nowele.68.2.05cal.Search in Google Scholar
Chambers, Jack K. 1993. Sociolinguistic dialectology. In Denis R. Preston (ed.), American dialect research, 133–164. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.10.1075/z.68.07chaSearch in Google Scholar
Davies, Mark. 2008–. The Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA): One billion words, 1990–2019. https://www.english-corpora.org/coca/ (accessed 3 August 2021).Search in Google Scholar
Davies, Mark. 2010. The Corpus of Historical American English (COHA): 400 million words, 1810–2009. https://corpus.byu.edu/coha/ (accessed 3 August 2021).Search in Google Scholar
Davies, Mark. 2019. The TV Corpus. https://www.english-corpora.org/tv/ (accessed 3 August 2021).Search in Google Scholar
Desagulier, Guillaume. 2017. The split infinitive: The final frontier. Around the word (blog). https://corpling.hypotheses.org/30 (accessed 30 June 2022).Search in Google Scholar
Huddleston, Rodney & Geoffrey K. Pullum. 2002. The Cambridge grammar of the English language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.10.1017/9781316423530Search in Google Scholar
Leech, Geoffrey, Margaret Deuchar & Robert Hoogenraad. 2006. English grammar for today. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.10.1007/978-1-137-23685-2Search in Google Scholar
Perales-Escudero, Moisés D. 2011. To split or to not split: The split infinitive past and present. Journal of English Linguistics 39(4). 313–334. https://doi.org/10.1177/0075424210380726.Search in Google Scholar
Ronan, Patricia, Sarah Buschfeld & Gerold Schneider. 2021. Split infinitives in native and non-native speaker data: A corpus-based analysis. Extended book of abstracts, ICAME41. https://kups.ub.uni-koeln.de/36462/1/ICAME41%20Extended%20Book%20of%20Abstracts.pdf (accessed 1 August 2021).Search in Google Scholar
van der Graaf, Willem. 1933. The split infinitive in Middle English. English Studies 15. 15–20. https://doi.org/10.1080/00138383308596605.Search in Google Scholar
van Gelderen, Elly. 2016. Split infinitives in Early Middle English. Language Dynamics and Change 6. 18–20. https://doi.org/10.1163/22105832-00601003.Search in Google Scholar
Wong Gonzales, Daniel Wilkinson & Shirley Dita. 2018. Split infinitives across World Englishes: A corpus-based investigation. Asian Englishes 20(3). 242–267.Search in Google Scholar
© 2023 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston
Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Research Articles
- Introduction to the special issue on “The language of science fiction”
- The impact of Star Wars on the English language: Star Wars-derived words and constructions in present-day English corpora
- “To boldly go where no man has gone before”: how iconic is the Star Trek split infinitive?
- From Star Trek to The Hunger Games: emblem gestures in science fiction and their uptake in popular culture
- The language of men and women in Star Trek: The Original Series and Star Trek: Discovery
- “So, I trucked out to the border, learned to say ain’t, came to find work”: the sociolinguistics of Firefly
- Subverting motion in science fiction? Beam in the Star Trek TV series
- Perceiving with strangeness: quantifying a style of altered consciousness as estrangement in a corpus of 1960s American science fiction
- “There was much new to grok”: an analysis of word coinage in science fiction literature
- Cyberpunk, steampunk, and all that punk: genre names and their uses across communities
Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Research Articles
- Introduction to the special issue on “The language of science fiction”
- The impact of Star Wars on the English language: Star Wars-derived words and constructions in present-day English corpora
- “To boldly go where no man has gone before”: how iconic is the Star Trek split infinitive?
- From Star Trek to The Hunger Games: emblem gestures in science fiction and their uptake in popular culture
- The language of men and women in Star Trek: The Original Series and Star Trek: Discovery
- “So, I trucked out to the border, learned to say ain’t, came to find work”: the sociolinguistics of Firefly
- Subverting motion in science fiction? Beam in the Star Trek TV series
- Perceiving with strangeness: quantifying a style of altered consciousness as estrangement in a corpus of 1960s American science fiction
- “There was much new to grok”: an analysis of word coinage in science fiction literature
- Cyberpunk, steampunk, and all that punk: genre names and their uses across communities
