Dedication
This work is dedicated
exclusively to the student, who wanted to know if there is any difference in
meaning between,
“I'm pleased to meet you”.
“I'm pleased meeting you”.
It is also dedicated to
all among learners who try hard seeking for authenticity in expression despite
the prevailing Internet acronyms, text message jargon, abbreviations,
initialisms, cyberslang, leetspeak, SMS code, txtspk,
textese, smileys and so on.
Abstract
When the
learners trigger the teaching process, effective learning takes place for both
the teacher and the learner. Certainly, most learners have questions in mind.
Those questions sometimes are the needed missing stimulus for the teacher to go
further and deeper with the subject matter. Taciturn students do not really
help with the teaching and learning processes. They should speak out their doubts
about every shakily learned issue. They should question their acquired
knowledge, and check for perfect understanding.
The ignorance
or the misuse of grammatical rules results in poor or distorted meaning. Take the
gerund and the infinitive for instance, they cause a lot of trouble when they
are not assimilated and used accurately. Both verb forms are rivals on
delivering messages meaningfully. They both compete but also collaborate at
times to facilitate communication. They make it either easy or hard for the
listener to understand discourse.
Generally,
the gerund and the infinitive cooperate and take each other’s places without
any change in meaning; however, there are instances where the gerund and the
infinitive do completely different jobs vis-à-vis the meaning intended.
Actually this is not a moody issue; it is controlled by grammatical rules. The
learners not able to master each case separately may fall in complete
disorientation and ambiguity.
Thanks
to the student’s inquiry, this paper will try to find out the secret behind
these two somehow antagonist verbal complements’ collaboration and competition
over meaning especially after specific verbs, prepositions and other
expressions.
