Noun plus verb

Question

Dear friends, have two questions I know that if a noun is followed by a verb, a verb should be an infinitive- I had an opportunity to perform and etc. 1.Are there exceptions to this rule? (Like, can one use - ing immediately after a noun?);

2 Can one use infinitive forms other than simple infintive after nouns?- the only example I saw is " It is a pleasure to have met you. Would be grateful if you would provide examples to the both questions. Thanks

GPY · Accepted Answer

VladvDear friends, have two questions I know that if a noun is followed by a verb, a verb should be an infinitive- I had an opportunity to perform and etc.
1.Are there exceptions to this rule? (Like, can one use - ing immediately after a noun?);

Clearly there are numerous cases where a noun can be followed by a verb form other than an infinitive. For example, "the man crossed the road", "I saw the man crossing the road" etc. etc. I think you need to specify a narrower question for it to be worthwhile.

Vladv2 Can one use infinitive forms other than simple infintive after nouns?- the only example I saw is " It is a pleasure to have met you. Would be grateful if you would provide examples to the both questions. Thanks

Again, you probably want to ask a narrower question, to avoid all kinds of juxtapositions that you may not wish to include, such as "women are more likely than men to have been furloughed", or whatever.

CalifJim · Answer

I don't think you'll learn much English by cataloging which part of speech follows each other part of speech. You can find any part of speech after any other part of speech in some sentence or another.

It would be more productive to concentrate on grammatical structures and transformations instead. For example, It is a pleasure to have met you is derived from the underlying To have met you is a pleasure by extraposing the subject to have met you to the end and substituting a dummy it in its place. So a pleasure to have met you is not even a constituent of the sentence. The infinitive finds itself after the noun pleasure completely by coincidence.

Nevertheless, infinitives can postmodify nouns. The noun is usually interpreted as the object of the infinitive.

people to meet; things to do; opportunities to consider; a family to support; a book to read; no money to contribute; some trash to take out; ...

Participles can postmodify nouns as well, but hardly ever alone. There is usually a whole participle phrase after the noun.

the students waiting for the bus; citizens protesting the tax laws; a river flowing through the countryside

items purchased on impulse; treasure hidden in a cave; a document shredded to bits

Just a single participle is typically placed before the noun it modifies.

a flowing river; hidden treasure

The reverse order is more likely to occur in poetry or in proverbs:

A penny saved is a penny earned.

CJ

Noun plus verb

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