Gerund Vs infinitive

by **namurad** Mon May 12, 2008 6:46 pm

Having more than the usual numbers of fingers or toes on the hands or feet is termed polydactyly.

A.

B. Having had more than the usual number of fingers or toes

C. Having more than the usual number of fingers or toes

D. To have more than the usual number of fingers or toes

E. To have more than the usual numbers of fingers or toes

confused between C and D. In fact I have two questions:

1. the actual confusion is when to use gerund and when to use infinitive.

2. the explanation says that "parallelism" is an issue here. could someone please elaborate?

Thanks
na

by **RonPurewal** Wed May 28, 2008 4:29 pm

we are now having a debate about this question. it has been in the cat pool since before i started working for mgmat, so i can't tell you the source of its inspiration (and, more importantly, whether there is an official precedent for the gerund/infinitive distinction being made here).

as a native speaker of english, i will staunchly vouch for 'having', although the exact explanation is elusive. the first few examples of 'infinitive nouns' i can conjure are all abstractions ('to know is to love', 'to become a mother of six was her greatest ambition'), while the first few examples of these gerunds tend to be concrete notions like the one presented here.
i will not go so far as to posit a general principle, at least not as yet.

by **host** Sat Jul 12, 2008 10:31 am

Please post the OA

by **RonPurewal** Fri Jul 18, 2008 4:32 am

host Wrote:Please post the OA

(c)

by **Hanumayamma** Thu Aug 14, 2008 8:18 pm

Inverted the sentence:

Polydactyly is termed as having ....

Polydactyly is termed as to have .... (awkward)

Answer: C

by **JonathanSchneider** Wed Oct 15, 2008 8:41 pm

Careful - inverting the word order would change the meaning here. To be "termed as" requires a certain order: the condition first, the term second.

by **UPA** Tue Nov 11, 2008 2:37 am

namurad Wrote:Having more than the usual numbers of fingers or toes on the hands or feet is termed polydactyly.

A.

B. Having had more than the usual number of fingers or toes

C. Having more than the usual number of fingers or toes

D. To have more than the usual number of fingers or toes

E. To have more than the usual numbers of fingers or toes

confused between C and D. In fact I have two questions:

1. the actual confusion is when to use gerund and when to use infinitive.

2. the explanation says that "parallelism" is an issue here. could someone please elaborate?

Thanks
na

I also tend to go with C.

by **dps** Thu Nov 20, 2008 12:30 pm

Ron, I think you're right about this.
http://web2.uvcs.uvic.ca/elc/studyzone/ ... gerinf.htm

the first few examples of 'infinitive nouns' i can conjure are all abstractions ('to know is to love', 'to become a mother of six was her greatest ambition'), while the first few examples of these gerunds tend to be concrete notions like the one presented here.

by **JonathanSchneider** Wed Jan 07, 2009 1:37 pm

nice!

by **Misha** Wed Jan 07, 2009 1:53 pm

Agree with the posts saying that this is tricky whether to go with the gerund or the infinitive. I thought of it as looking inside a dictionary, what would the definition say. It would say, "polydactyly - the condition of having ..." Don't believe it would say, " polydactyly - to have ..." But I'm biased as a native American English speaker.

by **Guest** Sun Jan 11, 2009 12:03 pm

Can we try to explain this based on Parallelism strategy for 'Verbs of Being'
As this statement has 'is', both sides of 'is' has to be parallel. As we know that the right side has a noun 'Polydactyly', left side also needs a noun (here gerund - Having) ?

by **grammarian** Thu Jan 15, 2009 2:21 am

Any native English speaker will,out of sheer lingual instinct,point to C as the correct usage. However ascertaining a strict grammar rule behind any such reasoning is advisable. It's true that this particular case is best explained by taking recourse to accepted standard English usage over any rule book diktat. Consider these two examples-a)- it is better to have peace than to have riches. b)- it is better having peace than having riches. I will prefer a) to b), as i am sure most people would. now this seems to distort(not distorting) the reasoning in the main question at hand. why should it not be to have instead of having there? To me, the idea is to present a noun instead of a verb. infinitives do not perform the function of a noun as gerunds do. hence in the main question having is the better choice, as we are not looking for a verb to express the desired meaning. in the two sentences i wrote, the idea is better expressed by using a verb,which happens to be the infinitive in this case. to me the matter stands resolved.

by **netcaesar** Thu Jan 15, 2009 12:03 pm

Can anyone explain the 2 main issues of this question, the HAVING vs TO HAVE and the parallelism?

I do not have these conceots clear in this question.

Regards.

by **vietnam01** Sat Jan 17, 2009 4:53 am

I also think that "doing" is used when we talk of fact while "to do" is non-fact.

that is why in this sentence "doing" is more logic

but I am not sure.

by **StaceyKoprince** Tue Feb 03, 2009 10:13 pm

I'm not familiar with a specific official question that tests the "infinitive as subject" construction. I'll ask our main grammar guy whether he has seen something like this. Until then, I would not worry about the issue here - there are thousands and thousands of grammar rules, and we should really only care about the ones that we know have been tested on the GMAT.