Monday, April 3, 2017

gerunds - like/love + to infinitive for habits and choices - shades in meaning


I have come across the following sentence (no context, the rubric of the task is to fill in the gaps with the words in capital letters, making all the necessary changes) in Macmillan Exam Skills for Russia by Malcolm Mann and Steve Taylore-Knowles, 2007:



My grandad loves to .... and we often go out on his boat. SAIL



If not for the particle 'to' before the ellipsis, my choice would be 'sailing' because according to Michael Swan in his Practical English Usage (Fully Revised) Third Edition OUP, 2005




to talk about enjoying activities in general, we can use ‘like… ing’ (especially in British English)'.



Why would authors give so little context and provide our students with such an ambiguous example?


Furthermore, the part of the rule that one 'can use ‘like + infinitive’ to talk about choices and habits' hasn't been covered/discussed anywhere in the coursebook.


What would your choice be if not for the particle 'to'? I'm mostly interested in British English native speakers' answers.




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