Why do you say: looking "to hearing" from you...?

Question

Why do you use gerund form instead of the infinitive?

Sth like this: "I'm looking forward 'to hear' from you soon..."

Why "it's nice to meeting you" instead of "...to meet you"?


Does this questions make sense? I think so...

Answer 1

The gerund is a verb form used as a noun.
I am looking forward to Christmas, to the weekend, to my vacation. ALL NOUNS. ALL THINGS. "hearing from you" is a thing, an action = an event. (it is NOT ongoing!) (not the present continuous)

Sometimes there is a difference between infinitive and gerund:
It's nice TO MEET YOU, (this one time).
It's nice MEETING new people. (a generalization)

The rules are clear, if you look them up in a grammar book.
Some phrases always end with a gerund.:
I'm tired of _______ing. I'm good at_____ing.

There is a short list of 25 verbs where it doesn't matter:
He prefers to speak English. He prefers speaking English.

I look forward to getting your feedback on this.

Answer 2

It makes sense, but here are the reasons I think this is used: the use of the gerund form in the phrased "Looking [forward] to" makes it so the next verb form MUST be the same. If you put on the "grammar rules" on in MSWord, and set it to "formal" or "academic", it will keep telling you this every time your verb forms/tenses don't match!

Also, using the gerund form indicates that the action will be (or is) ONGOING. Or it is the state of something being, not just a one-time action. It implies continuity, as in, getting a phone call and having it last some time, rather than just getting a quick call.

Hope that helps! I'm LOOKING forward to GETTING your feedback on this! :)

Answer 3

I've noticed that a lot of show Border collies have longer hair. When herding, it is better for them to have shorter hair, in my opinion (and in many others), because it doesn't get tangled in long grass, it's easier to keep neat, etc. But I have seen a couple medium length coat Border collies herding, just none with a really long show length coat. Seeing that everyone so far has mentioned that... That really means nothing, haha. Or like what Mutter said. Some show BCs are bred for looks, herders are bred for intelligence (which makes sense, if you ask me. The only dogs show breeders ever seem to produce are classically marked black and white, fluffy BCs. The reason the breed is so smart is they have never been bred for looks, which is why they can be any color under the sun, can have any coat length, and even have a pretty wide weight range for a smaller scale medium sized breed), and so it is argued that show breeders are ruining the breed. Or I suppose with banned coloring in certain breeds. The "silver" lab probably has the potential to be a fine hunter if trained properly, but the coloring means no shows for them. That's kind of the other way around though. ADD: or i suppose the AmStaff is a good example. According to some people that answered my question yesterday, the Amstaff and the APBT started out as the same breed, but the Amstaff had the "game" look bred out of it so it would be show quality. So pretty much every visual difference between Amstaffs and APBTs are for show...

Answer 4

According to strict grammar:

a verbal form after a preposition is in the gerund!
I dream of going away
They whisper about cheating
I am interested in learning Chinese
He opened the door by using force
etc

Now:

I want an apple (an apple is the object)
I want to eat an apple (to eat, infinitive, is the object)
there is NO PREPOSITION

I am looking forward to the holidays
I am looking forward to it
’to’ is a preposition AND NOT PART OF A VERB,
’the holidays’ or ’it’ the indirect object

I am looking forward to meeting you
’to’ is a preposition, so ’meeting’ must be in the gerund form

cf: he objects to smoking etc

It is clear that in spoken usage this is often neglected, but actually IT IS WRONG

Your correct sentences are therefore:
”I’m looking forward to hearing from you soon”
and: ”It’s nice to meet you”

or: ”meeting you is nice”, but that’s another story

Yes, fellows, these are the rules, and you neglect them!

Answer 5

The complete phrase is "looking forward to" which is followed by the gerund (hearing from you, seeing you soon, watching the game, that sort of thing). The "to" is part of the prepositional phrase "forward to" in the construction you are talking about, but part of the verbal phrase (to see, to hear) in an infinitive. Don't ask me why we say it that way, we just do.

And we say either "It is nice to meet you" or "It is nice meeting you", but not "It is nice to meeting you". We use either the infinitive or the gerund in this sentence, but not to + gerund as in your example. You will sometimes see to in front of a gerund, but it is usually a slang expression that would not be used in written English.

Answer 6

It isn't an infinitive. You are adding a gerund to the phrase "to look forward to." It is actually the object of the preposition "to" in this case.
There are a lot of these in English. For example:
I am used to waking up early.
I am accustomed to waking up early.
I object to . . .
It has nothing to do with urgency. Sometimes "to" is used as the infinitive, but it is more often used as a preposition.

By the way, no one would say it is nice to meeting you. The people who say it is possible are wrong.

Added: I have no idea what saehi is talking about. What part does he think is used wrong in conversation?

Answer 7

It's a localized dialect probably to add urgancy to the language. Sometimes with friends to don't have to be proper or use proper language. "it's nice to meeting you" sounds like you've met the person before and they are meeting you over and over again. I've noticed that foreign people say this a lot and it could be a translation problem or cultural differences but and that's pretty confusing because you can only meet a person once because Meet is formal and you only get one chance to make a 1st impression. (That's probably the cultural and localized difference.) but looking forwared to hearing from somebody is this I think. when you say that you want to hear from somebody you want to hear from them because you'll be the one hearing and you have to exchange conversation back and forth. Does that make sense? for the visual learners it's kind of like if your running and two people are running, they are running in opposite directions from one another. but if one ran and the other is running they are connecting. I wish I could draw diagrams on this thing........

Answer 8

It's all about having a sense of urgency to hear from the person. It seems as if you have an itch that needs to be scratched when it comes to the way people type or speak. You are going to drive yourself crazy if you don't get a grip on things. Good luck!

Answer 9

I use 'hear'