towerSpider wrote:Lets make it into simple analogy for
understanding.
(1)I would prefer to love Juli, rather
than Sonia. (i think this one is wrong
because rather than is used for
preferences but here, we have two
nouns : Juli, and sonia. Though
". . . .juli, not sonia. . ." will be correct.
Other reason is that in this situation
you are loving both. What if you
have preference for loving juli over
killing juli. in such cases you just can
not skip verb because verbs are
different.)
(2)I would prefer to love Juli, rather
than love Sonia.
(3)I would prefer to love Juli, rather
that to love Sonia.
Now my question is why choose (3)
over (2) even thugi (2) is concise?

Hi - very interesting question. Although not an expert, here's my 2 cents.

I love to play rather than (to) study. Both with and without to the sentence is grammatically correct, and the one without to would be more concise.

However the question that you pose is that of an idiom.

prefer X to Y

where X and Y are nouns (? is this correct - experts ? can X or Y be something other than noun ?)

option (2) I would prefer (to love juli, rather than) (love sonia) - the to used for comparison between the two nouns, X and Y, is missing.

option (3) I would prefer (to love juli, rather than) to ([to] love sonia). the [to] is implied as in the play vs study example above. The to, according to me, serves the purpose of comparison required in the idiom prefer X to Y. The purpose of to in option (3) is NOT to create parallelism between "to love Juli" and "to love Sonia". "To love Juli" and "love Sonia" are parallel.

Experts please weigh in.