Present-day conceptions of "correctness" are to a large extent based on the notion, prominent in the 18th century, that language is of divine origin and hence was perfect in its beginnings but is constantly in danger of corruption and decay unless it is diligently kept in line by wise men who are able to get themselves accepted as authorities, such as those who write dictionaries and grammars. Latin was regarded as having retained much of its original "perfection."... When English grammars came to be written, they were based on Latin grammar, even down to the terminology... The most important eighteenth century development in the English language was its conscious regulation by those who were not really qualified for the job, but who managed to acquire authority as linguistic gurus” (p. 208).
John Wallace, Grammatica Linguae Anglicanae, 1653.
Dean Swift, Proposal for correcting, improving, and ascertaining the English Tongue, 1712:
"our language is extremely
imperfect"... "it offends against every part of grammar"... "most of the best
authors of our age" commit "many gross improprieties which ... ought to be
discarded."
(quoted in Pyles and Algeo, 205)
Bishop Lowth, Short Introduction to English Grammar (1762),
"filled pages of footnotes
with examples of "incorrect" usage by our most emminent authors... It apparently
never occured to his contemporaries to doubt whether so famous and successful a
man had inside information about the ideal state of the English language."
(208)
"an't (early Mod Eng [ænt]) for am (are is) not is apparently of late 17th-century origin; the variant ain't occurs about a century later... [at about this time, due to two sound changes in aren't, æ > a and loss of /r/, the two became homophones and got confused]. Now the form aren't I has gained ground among those who consider ain't a linguistic mortal sin. Although ain't has fallen victim to a series of schoolteachers' crusades, ... [it was frequently used at the time by very highly educated, cultivated people]... Despite its current reputation as a shibboleth of uneducated speech, ain't is still used by many cultivated speakers in informal circumstances" (p. 203).
"They outlawed, as far as
the educated are concerned, the emphatic and still very viable double negative
construction on the grounds stated by Lowth that 'two negatives in English
destroy one another, or are equivalent to an affirmative -- in English, that is
to say, just as in mathematics..."
(p. 204)
But cf. Chaucer's not uncommon quadruple negations:
forwhy to tellen nas
[ne was] nat his entente / to nevere no man
'which he never intended to tell to
anybody'
He nevere yet no vileyneye
ne sayde / in al his lyf unto no manner wight
'he never said any evil, nor, in all his life, did he do any.'
And cf. modern examples in popular songs:
I can't get no (buh-duh-duh)
satisfaction (buh-duh-duh) (Rolling
Stones)
i.e., 'I can get some/complete satisfaction'
I don't need nobody -- I don't need nobody
but you (Loggins and Messina)
i.e., 'I do need somebody/everybody -- I do need somebody/everybody except you.'
[This is from Spike -- Pyles and Algeo's
discussion is similar, but less agitated]
In Latin the infinitive is a verb inflection, a root plus an affix. Obviously
you can't put another word in between a root and an affix. In English the
"infinitive" is the preposition to followed by the the bare verb stem.
These are independent words. What's the difference between a root plus a suffix
and two independent words? You can put something between two words\!! For
instance:
These are the voyages of the Starship Enterprise, it's ten-year mission: to seek out new life, to explore the galaxy, to go boldly... no, boldly to go, no... DAMN! to boldly go where no man has gone before!
"In Old and Middle English
times shall and will were sometimes used to express simple futurity, though as a
rule they implied, respectively, obligation [shall] and volition [will]. The
present prescrbed use of these words, the bane of many an American and Northern
British schoolchild, stems ultimately from the seventeenth century, the rules
having first been codified by John Wallis, an eminent professor of geometry at
Oxford who wrote in Latin a grammar of the English language (Grammatica
Linguae Anglicanae, 1653.). The rule is... to express a future event without
emotional ovetones, one should say I shall, we shall, but
you/he/she/they will; conversely, for emphasis, willfulness, or insistence,
one should say I/we will, but you/he/she/they shall... Despite a
crusade of more than three centuries on behalf of the distinction, the rule for
making it is still largely a mystery for most Americans, who get along very well
in expressing futurity and willfulness without it."
(p. 205)