Re: "To run is good exercise"?!

martinphipps2@xxxxxxxxx writes:

> It seems that non-native speakers of English in Taiwan do not
> realize that "To run is good exercise" is not a good English
> sentence. A collegue today even said it was grammatically correct.
> I don't think it is: I would never start a sentence with an
> infinitive. The one counterexample I can think of would be the song
> lyric "To know him is to love him" except here the sentence is in
> the form verb phrase = verb phrase and not the awkward verb phrase =
> noun phrase as in the previous example.

The choice between the infinitive & the gerund is a very difficult
matter in English, but the rule you are suggesting does not exist. It
is fairly common even in conversational English to begin a sentence
with an infinitive, and there is no requirement to follow it up with
another infinitive; e.g.,

To bring that question up now would be a big mistake.
To have lunch with you is always a pleasure.
To be rude can be a duty.

In each of those examples, the gerund would do just as well as the
infinitive, conveying the same meaning but perhaps being a little less
formal. In other contexts, tho, one or the other may be impossible,
or the two may be different in meaning or emphasis. In particular,
when the infinitive or gerund is the object of a verb, every such verb
is a law unto itself & must be mastered separately. This subject
comes up from time to time on alt.usage.english, and the variety of
examples makes me wonder how anyone manages to learn English.

In the example you give, I would say "running" is better than "to
run", but only because it goes better with the notion of an organized
& repeated activity. On the other hand, in

To run all the way would leave me exhausted.

I think the infinitive is better.
--
--- Joe Fineman joe_f@xxxxxxxxxxx

||: But more important, last and first, :||
||: A lot is relished by the worst. :||
.

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