In the following sentence: " He likes to sit there and read a book". I've been noticing that most of the time, we don't use 'to' after the word 'and', but even though there isn't 'to' before the verb, it is still in the infinitive form. Is there any rule which explains that?
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1It may help you to see 'sit and read' as a unit, rather than separate activities.– Yosef BaskinApr 21, 2020 at 15:56
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Yes, Yosef offers sound advice. Grammatically, deletions are common in English. The second 'to' is logical, but doesn't sound as idiomatic, and in fact would indicate 'He likes sitting there, and he likes reading books' rather than 'He likes sitting there reading a book', a phase structure like 'He likes going shopping' or 'She stood looking into the distance'.– Edwin AshworthApr 21, 2020 at 16:38
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2 Answers
Parallelism. You omit common words the second time. All of these are possible:
He likes to sit there and he likes to read a book.
He likes to sit there and likes to read a book.
He likes to sit there and to read a book.
He likes to sit there and read a book.
It is a compound infinitive:
"Ours not to reason why, ours but to do and die."
answered Apr 21, 2020 at 15:54
