Parallelism with Infinitive or Gerund?

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karthikpandian19: Legendary Member; Posts: 1665; Joined: Thu Nov 03, 2011 7:04 pmFollowed by: 70 members; Thanked: 165 times

by karthikpandian19 » Mon Apr 23, 2012 10:43 pm

What is the correct version of this sentence....(Parallelism)

Infinitive parallel or Gerund parallel? Why

I like to run through forests more than I enjoy walking through crowds .

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Source: Beat The GMAT — Sentence Correction | Mon Apr 23, 2012 10:43 pm

GmatKiss: Legendary Member; Posts: 2789; Joined: Tue Jul 26, 2011 12:19 amFollowed by: 43 members; Location: Chennai, India; Thanked: 206 times; GMAT Score:640

by GmatKiss » Tue Apr 24, 2012 1:05 am

karthikpandian19 wrote:What is the correct version of this sentence....(Parallelism)

Infinitive parallel or Gerund parallel? Why

I like to run through forests more than I enjoy walking through crowds .

IMO: I like to run through the forests more than to walk though the crowd.

Please correct me if am wrong!

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karthikpandian19: Legendary Member; Posts: 1665; Joined: Thu Nov 03, 2011 7:04 pmFollowed by: 70 members; Thanked: 165 times

by karthikpandian19 » Tue Apr 24, 2012 4:42 am

Actually its the other way around.....
I like running through forests more than i enjoy walking through crowds

I am looking out for someone to explain the meaning????

GmatKiss wrote:
karthikpandian19 wrote:What is the correct version of this sentence....(Parallelism)

Infinitive parallel or Gerund parallel? Why

I like to run through forests more than I enjoy walking through crowds .
IMO: I like to run through the forests more than to walk though the crowd.

Please correct me if am wrong!

Like this post

chris@magoosh: GMAT Instructor; Posts: 88; Joined: Tue Jan 17, 2012 5:01 pmFollowed by: 37 members; Thanked: 54 times

by chris@magoosh » Tue Apr 24, 2012 2:19 pm

I think what is confusing everyone here is not necessarily a case of parallelism between gerunds/infinitives.

In general, you should either have gerund and gerund, or infinitive and infinitive. The problem here is you cannot
have infinitive and infinitive because it violates the idiom, enjoy verb-ing. Therefore you must have the following:

I like running through the forest more than I enjoy walking through crowds.

If you get rid of 'enjoy', then you can use either.

I like to run through the forest more I like to walk through crowds.

This sentence sounds a little bit repetitive with the double 'like'. Here is perhaps a much more succinct way:

I like running through the forest more than walking through the crowds.

We do not to repeat 'I like' because it is implied (this is called an ellipsis).

Hope that helps

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