I thought of that but regarded
'gradually' as too far, too many
words away, from 'get', the word
it is modifying.
It's not as good as the split infinitive, but it works okay despite the distance, because it's modifying the entire sentence.
When I was diagramming sentences,
they never let me modify "the
entire sentence"! Maybe the
reason was that Latin never did that!
Not an english expert, but would "She wants, gradually, to get rid of her teddy bears" work?
Problem is, without thinking about
the likely meaning, at first glance
it's not clear what 'gradually' modifies,
that is, it may modify 'wants', that
is, her wanting is only gradual and
not yet full; such are some of the
possibilities of subtlety of meaning
with the English
language!
Ohh, I see the confusion there, but I like the ambiguity it causes. It reminds me of "Pretty little girl's school"