# went out 'rather than' < stayed/ staying> at home



## eratea

_[[ Moderator note.  This thread was, for a short while, part of a thread about infinitive/gerund, CLICK HERE.  As a consequence, some references to posts are not valid.  What was once post #n may now be post #(n-something) or may not even be in this thread.  Sorry for any confusion caused.
panjandrum ]]_

The boy went out rather than ____ at home.
A.stay  B.stayed   C.staying  D.stays
The answer is B here. cuz here we guess 'rather than' not only is a preposition but also could be a conjuction. I am not sure if I am right?  what about the answer C? cuz I read this one 'Why didn't you ask for help, rather than trying to do it on your own? Here are two morer sentences 'I decided to stay at home rather than to go/going to the cinema.' and 'Many children ask their parents to give money to charity rather than buy/buying them snacks.


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## pob14

I would use A or C; I would not use B.  (I would definitely not use "cuz." )


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## Andygc

Who says the answer is B? It's not. A and C are possible, B and D are not.


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## eratea

Here I am told 'rather than' can be a conjunction, so went out argrees for stayed at home. I am not sure. So I'm here to ask it. What's difference between using go/going in the sentences above. Or maybe the sentences I posted are awful, I see there are better ways to say those.


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## EStjarn

Andygc said:


> A and C are possible, B and D are not.



Could you elaborate on how A can be an option here? It would seem to contradict Thomas Tompion's analysis in post #5.


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## Thomas Tompion

eratea said:


> Here I am told 'rather than' can be a conjunction, so went out argrees for stayed at home. I am not sure. So I'm here to ask it. What's difference between using go/going in the sentences above. Or maybe the sentences I posted are awful, I see there are better ways to say those.


I'm not sure what you are asking now, Eratea.


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## eratea

The boy went out rather than stayed at home. Is this sentence wrong? The correct one should be' The boy went out rather than staying at home',  right? and can I also say 'The boy went out rather than stay home.' ?


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## Kirill V.

eratea said:


> The boy went out rather than stayed at home. Is this sentence wrong? The correct one should be' The boy went out rather than staying at home',  right? and can I also say 'The boy went out rather than stay home.' ?



I think the explanation is above in posts No. 2-6, 8 
_The boy went out rather than staying at home_' = He preferred going out to staying at home (it was his choice)

_The boy went out rather than stayed at home _To me this suggests that somebody was watching the boy, then they lost him, but they are of the opinion that he probably went out rather than stayed


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## eratea

Thomas Tompion said:


> I'm not sure what you are asking now, Eratea.


My question is #9. Are you available to check it?


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## Andygc

EStjarn said:


> Could you elaborate on how A can be an option here? It would seem to contradict Thomas Tompion's analysis in post #5.


Sorry, but I don't see how TT's analysis affects this simple sentence. This use of the bare infinitive after "rather than" in such sentences is everyday English. "I will stay in rather than go out", "I will walk home rather than run", "I will go to the pub rather than stay at home". I would not use the gerund in any of those. Shifting into the past may affect my choice of gerund or infinitive, but that seems not to be a matter of grammar or meaning. "I stayed in rather than go out", "I walked home rather than running"; "the boy went out rather than stay/staying at home" works either way for me. That's the point Loob made in post #4.

Whatever is acceptable between gerund and bare infinitive, the simple past is wrong.


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## Andygc

eratea, "rather" is classified as an adverb. The phrase "rather than" is not a conjunction. The adverb "rather" expresses preference. "Than" is the conjunctive particle introducing the thing which is less preferable. The phrase "rather than" is not followed by the indicative, but by the bare infinitive or a gerund, and it is wrong to try to match tenses as in "The boy *went* out rather than *stayed* at home."


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## Thomas Tompion

EStjarn said:


> Could you elaborate on how A can be an option here? It would seem to contradict Thomas Tompion's analysis in post #5.



I agree with Andy.  In the sentences I considered in post #5* rather than* was followed either by the gerund or by the bare infinitive.  A contains a bare infinitive, so I can't see the contradiction.

Like Andy I can't see that I could countenance following *rather than* with the simple past.  It could be followed by a past participle in a passive construction - *he was taught rather than left to his own devices* - but we aren't concerned with a passive construction here.


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## EStjarn

Thomas Tompion said:


> . . .I can't see the contradiction.


Here's the part I am referring to.


Thomas Tompion said:


> In 1a. B is suggesting that *we* should avoid regarding F as Swiss and D as Serbian.



If we were to use the same logic in our analysis of

_The boy went out rather than *stay* at home._​
we would have to conclude that "stay at home" referred not to the subject, "the boy", but to the reader, "we", which of course makes no sense. Therein lies the seeming contradiction.


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## Thomas Tompion

EStjarn said:


> Here's the part I am referring to.
> 
> 
> If we were to use the same logic in our analysis of
> 
> _The boy went out rather than *stay* at home._​
> we would have to conclude that "stay at home" referred not to the subject, "the boy", but to the reader, "we", which of course makes no sense. Therein lies the seeming contradiction.


I see your point.  I think the distinction I was drawing only applies, if at all, when both possibilities are realistic, which they clearly aren't in this case.


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## EStjarn

Andygc said:


> The phrase "rather than" is not a conjunction.



Certain grammarians do consider it to be a conjunction. Here's from the entry for "rather" in _Garner's Modern American Usage _(2003) by Bryan Garner:


> *A. Rather than.* This phrase can function either as a conjunction or as a preposition. As a conjunction (the more common use), _rather than_ demands that the constructions on each side of it be parallel: "If we can, we will solve this problem diplomatically _rather than_ forcibly." But as a preposition, _rather than_ can connect nonparallel constructions: "_Rather than_ staying home on a Saturday night, we went out to six different bars."


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## Thomas Tompion

I'd not take issue with Mr Garner here.

There's a difference between 'considering it to be a conjunction' and saying that it 'can act as a conjunction'.


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## EStjarn

A word or phrase that can act as a conjunction ought to be a conjunction, if not just a conjunction. In this case it is apparently also a preposition. But I think that is besides the point.

What throws me off, though, is that if "rather than" can be seen as a conjunction, why couldn't it be succeeded by an indicative, as in eratea's _The boy went out rather than stayed at home.
_
I remain unconvinced about the incorrectness of the sentence.


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## Andygc

EStjarn said:


> I remain unconvinced about the incorrectness of the sentence.


That's a pity, given that it is incorrect. You might notice that your quotation from Garner involves a different parallel construction "If we can, we will solve this problem diplomatically _rather than_ forcibly." It has adverbs in parallel, whereas his non-parallel example is the use in this thread "_Rather than_ staying home on a Saturday night, we went out to six different bars." I suspect that if he thought "The boy went out rather than stayed at home." was correct, he'd have provided an example. Indeed, his "bar" example is structurally the same as answer C. The parallel structure is very common and can involve adjectives, nouns, gerunds and infinitives - but not the indicative.

Whatever you choose to believe, it remains the case that the book answer to the question in post #9 is wrong. I think that A and C are correct and clearly Thomas agrees with me (as do posters in other threads). While there are only two correct answers from my perspective, your disbelief would result in three correct answers, which makes it a remarkably poor question to give to a learner.


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## Thomas Tompion

Hello Andy,

While agreeing with you entirely about the question, and in not being able to accept _The boy went out rather than stayed at home, _I think there are circumstances where the parallelism around _rather than_ can be drawn between two indicatives.

The case I'm thinking of is where the two indicatives share a common object, as in this example from the British Corpus:

As a result, most management techniques in North American forests approach, rather than achieve, a situation of sustained yield._ Global environmental change._ Mannion, A M. Harlow: Longman Scientific & Technical, 1991.


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## Andygc

Thomas, you are absolutely correct, and I should have thought of that structure. Apologies to Estjarn about saying the indicative cannot be used, but not about saying that the example we are discussing is an error.


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## EStjarn

I can't imagine either "blow" or "blowing" for "blew" in the following sentence from _Our Mutual Friend _by Charles Dickens:

_The grating wind sawed rather than blew; and as it sawed, the sawdust whirled about the sawpit._​


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## Andygc

EStjarn said:


> I can't imagine either "blow" or "blowing" for "blew" in the following sentence from _Our Mutual Friend _by Charles Dickens:
> 
> _The grating wind sawed rather than blew; and as it sawed, the sawdust whirled about the sawpit._​


Congratulations for finding that, but I could happily say "The grating wind sawed rather than blowing." That's an example  of a sentence in which I'd prefer the gerund over the infinitive. I don't care much to disagree with Dickens, but I don't think I'd write that myself.


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## Thomas Tompion

I think that EStjarn's Dickens example is interesting in that it doesn't grate on me the way the sentence about the boy does, and I'm keen to know why.

The Dickens example uses short verbs rather than long ones and the parallelism is set up very clearly - _Subject 1st verb rather than 2nd verb_.
_
The boy went out rather than stayed at home _also has this structure but the verbs are phrasal and lack the punch of those in the Dickens sentence.

I'd be able to accept _The boy went out rather than in_, and, more interestingly, _The boy ran rather than walked_, which is closer to the Dickens example.

If we turn the sentences round, like the sentence in the OP, they become unviable - interesting for what seem to be grammatically unexceptionable sentences - _Rather than walked, the boy ran_, _Rather than blew, the wind sawed_.  This suggests to me that we need to have the parallel clearly and punchily presented to us for it to be acceptable.  The sentence about the boy going out falls at this hurdle, in my view.


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## Loob

I wonder if the Dickens sentence works because the idea isn't:
_(A) the wind had a choice of two alternatives, and it chose to saw._
but rather:
_(B) the wind did something, and "sawed" is a better word for what it did than "blew"._
?

Just thinking aloud....

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*EDIT*: I also think TT's "reverse the order of clauses" test is important, though my brain is, at the moment, refusing to tell me whether it has anything to do with my musings above.


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## Thomas Tompion

Interesting.

On your hypothesis then, Loob, _the boy strolled off rather than ambled down the road_ would be possible, ie. not presenting the rejection of one thing in favour of the other, but the writer finding a word which seems to him more precise.

I'm not sure I wouldn't prefer Andy's _the boy strolled off rather than ambling down the road._

I wouldn't mind _the boy strolled rather than ambled down the road_, but that's like my example about management techniques in #26.


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## Loob

I think my hypothesis (grand word for middle-of-the-night ramblings) would suggest that:
_The boy strolled rather than ambled down the road_
would work - the idea being that "strolled" is a better description of what he did than "ambled" - but I'm not sure about
_The boy strolled off rather than ambled down the road_
which doesn't seem to me to be well-formed.

I don't think we've got to the bottom of this yet, but I'm glad EStjarn is pushing us: it's intriguing!

-------

Just to add:

In relation to eratea's post 9 question, I'm with everyone who says option B is definitely wrong.


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## Thomas Tompion

Loob said:


> _The boy strolled off rather than ambled down the road _ doesn't seem to me to be well-formed_.[...]_


I agree with you that this doesn't work, Loob.

For some reason the parallelism needs to be presented very directly, and phrasal verbs don't manage to do that, it seems to me, unless they govern the same object.


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## EStjarn

Loob said:


> I wonder if the Dickens sentence works because the idea isn't:
> _(A) the wind had a choice of two alternatives, and it chose to saw._



We haven't much discussed the possible meaning of the past tense version, but kayve made a remark about it in post #15:


kayve said:


> _The boy went out rather than stayed at home _To me this suggests that somebody was watching the boy, then they lost him, but they are of the opinion that he probably went out rather than stayed



Personally I fancy a detective attempting to reconstruct a missing person scenario.  Either way, it's not about choice. I would agree completely with your rejection if it were.

We could argue that the exercise book "suggests" that it is about choice, as that would represent a normal context. In that sense I feel the exercise is, at best, misleading.

However, my impression here is that the sentence is rejected no matter how we interpret it, and that is what I have a difficulty swallowing, still.


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## Thomas Tompion

I think the natives seem to agree that you should swallow it, EStjarn.

The criteria for such a sentence to work seem to be narrow, and that sentence doesn't meet them.

I can see that one might say to oneself that if the Dickens sentence is acceptable, that one, which appears to have the same grammatical form, should also be all right.

The fact is, however, that it isn't, in the view of the native speakers who have posted so far, and we need to establish why.  We have made some suggestions.

In other words, I feel you should move from trying to persuade us that _The boy went out rather than stayed at home_ is acceptable, to helping us explore why it isn't.


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## Andygc

Andygc said:


> Congratulations for finding that


When I wrote that, I meant it, because it provoked further thought. I hope it wasn't misinterpreted.

I didn't let the question stop me from sleeping, but I ended up thinking about it this morning, and had some parallel thoughts with those of Thomas and Loob.

I accept that there are valid examples of parallel constructions using the indicative. The Dickens example is one; it is acceptable, although I am not entirely convinced that it is perfect, but that may well be a matter of personal style. "The boy strolled rather than ambled down the road" is an excellent example. The point is the exact parallel construction of the common subject, the two verbs and the common adverbial. I think Thomas's observation about phrasal verbs is off target. I don't regard "went out" as a phrasal verb as there is no separate meaning in the phrase against the words separately. The real issue is the lack of a shared adverbial. "went" has "out" and "stayed" has "at home". The sentence fails to be a true parallel. The somewhat odd sentence "The boy stayed in rather than went in" is fine but the adverb needs to be echoed otherwise we end up with "The boy stayed rather than went in" in which we automatically fail to associate "in" with "stayed" and want the sentence to be "The boy stayed rather than go/going in" and thus meaning something entirely different.

"The boy strolled off rather than ambled down the road" fails in the same way, by lacking true parallelism, although in this case "stroll off" is a phrasal verb.


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## Thomas Tompion

People may find this blog on the matter interesting click

The writer seems to have researched this issue, and the references to so-called experts are helpful.

Cross posted with Andy.


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## Thomas Tompion

Andygc said:


> The real issue is the lack of a shared adverbial. "went" has "out" and "stayed" has "at home". The sentence fails to be a true parallel.[...]


Yes, I think this is a good point, Andy.


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## Kirill V.

Thomas Tompion said:


> I think the natives seem to agree that you should swallow it, EStjarn.



_The detectives lost the boy. However, based on the data they had the prevailing opinion was that the boy went out rather than stayed home._

Do I understand correctly that the native speakers' consesus view is that the above sentence is not correct? To me, that would mean that the "rather than" construction generally does not work for such contexts. Am I right?


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## Thomas Tompion

Funnily enough, I could accept _the boy went out rather than stayed home,_ but not _the boy went out rather than stayed at home._

I'd never say it because I'd never say _he stayed home, _but the more direct parallel means that I'm not troubled by the_ rather than_ construction in _the boy went out rather than stayed home._

My fellow natives seem ominously silent.


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## Kirill V.

I can delete _home, _if it produces unintended side effects:
_
The detectives lost the boy. However, based on the data they had the prevailing opinion was that the boy went out rather than stayed _


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## Andygc

Thomas Tompion said:


> My fellow natives seem ominously silent.


No, doing other things and thinking about it. A woodturning lathe provides time for making and thinking at the same time.


kayve said:


> I can delete _home, _if it produces unintended side effects:


No, that's not the point


kayve said:


> The detectives lost the boy. However, based on the data they had the prevailing opinion was that the boy went out rather than stayed home.


There's two slightly different meanings of "rather than". I'll stick to BE.
 "The boy went out rather than stayed at home" as a statement tells me that, for whatever reason, the boy went out by choice - he wanted to, or somebody pointed a gun at him; the circumstances don't matter. It is, to me, wrong and should be, as already said, "The boy went out rather than stay/staying at home".

"However, based on the data they had the prevailing opinion was that the boy went out rather than stayed at home." tells me what the detectives deduced. The meaning is "they had the opinion that the boy went out rather than the opinion that the boy stayed at home." The "rather than" is comparing the opinions and choosing the more likely rather than describing the boy's preference, so from the point of view of meaning, it is a parallel construction.

In other words I have no problem at all with "However, based on the data they had the prevailing opinion was that the boy went out rather than stayed at home." and I think I understand why it doesn't even make me pause, whereas "The boy went out rather than stayed at home." brings me to an abrupt halt.

It has been interesting trying to understand how, for me, one sentence can seem glaringly wrong and another using exactly the same words can be accepted without batting an eyelid. Thank you EStjarn and kayve.


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## e2efour

kayve said:


> _The detectives lost the boy. However, based on the data they had the prevailing opinion was that the boy went out rather than stayed _


I see no problem with this sentence if we write _stayed in_ (or _stayed at home_).

The views expressed in this thread seem to have swung backwards and forwards. First, there was a denial that _rather than_ cannot be followed by a past tense, which is clearly wrong.
Example: "Over the lip of the little dell, on the side away from the hill, they felt, rather than saw, a shadow rise, one shadow or more than one." (Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring). Is it possible to write an infinitive (_see_) or an -ing form (_seeing_) here? I think not. 

The focus now seems to be on claiming that there must be some kind of parallelism, the exact nature of which seems to be difficult to define.

More examples are given in _The American Heritage Usage Guide to Contemporary Usage and Style (2005)_, which is worth reading.


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## Thomas Tompion

I'm intrigued, and impressed, Andy, but not entirely convinced.

If you give the sentence a preamble like *based on the data they had the prevailing opinion was* you are effectively creating reported speech (reported belief).  And this reporting imposes the indicative in places where the sentence by itself could put either the infinitive (*stay*) or the -ing form (*staying*), or does it?

*The boy went out rather than staying at home* reported becomes *He concluded that the the boy went out rather than stayed at home.*  Are  you happy with this final sentence too?


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## Kirill V.

Andygc said:


> There's two slightly different meanings of "rather than". I'll stick to BE.



Thank you very much, Andy!

My question was exactly whether that second meaning was possible, since earlier discussion in this thread seemed to put that in question. Or perhaps people just did not focus on that possibility since the original question implied the other meaning of _rather than_ (reflecting a choice or preference of "the subject").

Now I got my question answered, thanks a lot!


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## Andygc

Thomas Tompion said:


> If you give the sentence a preamble like *based on the data they had the prevailing opinion was* you are effectively creating reported speech (reported belief).  And this reporting imposes the indicative in places where the sentence by itself could put either the infinitive (*stay*) or the -ing form (*staying*), or does it?
> 
> *The boy went out rather than staying at home* reported becomes *He concluded that the the boy went out rather than stayed at home.*  Are  you happy with this final sentence too?


Yes, I'm happy with that. That's the same as the detective sentence "t_he prevailing opinion was (the detectives concluded) that the boy went out rather than stayed at home". Is it that it's effectively reported speech and I'm fishing for red herrings?_


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## EStjarn

The following is an incomprehensive exposé of member opinions on the "rather than + simple present/past" construction, as expressed in various other threads, to serve as a complement to the opinions above. Hopefully it will help provide an even fuller picture of this intriguing facet of English usage.

_Ed went to jail *rather than pay/paid* his parking fines._


Beryl from Northallerton said:


> I certainly consider [the version with "paid"] to be incorrect.


_Ed walked *rather than drove* to work._


Biffo said:


> This uses the indicative. It reports a state of affairs.
> Detective:_ I believe that Ed drove to work that day. That gave him time to commit the murder._
> Ed's friend: _Ed walked rather than drove._


_The speaker describes *rather than praises* city lovers._



suzi br said:


> This sentence seems fine to me.


_I walked *rather than ran* to the store. / I walked to the store *rather than ran*._


brian said:


> I would never say _run_ here. [... I]t doesn't matter if the complement of the verb (in this case, the prepositional phrase _to the store_) comes before or after the verb (_ran_).





BantyMom said:


> I don't like any of the walked/ran/run examples so I'm not even going there.


_She screamed *rather than called/call out* his name._



timpeac said:


> [With "called"] The way she uttered his name could better be described as screaming than calling. [With "call"] She chose to scream instead of calling out his name (perhaps she is being tortured to reveal his name).


_She chanted the song *rather than sang* it._



timpeac said:


> ... it often does sound strained to me - particularly if the two verb forms are split. In order of acceptability I'd rank from best to worst-
> 
> She chanted rather than sang.
> She chanted rather than sang the song. (Hmmm)
> She chanted the song rather than sang it (This sounds bad to me).


_During the Great Depression, many formerly succesful businessmen committed suicide *rather than live/lived* as paupers._



timpeac said:


> . . .you need "live". It is not marked for time, but represents the fact of "living".





brian said:


> I kind of disagree.  I agree that "lived" sounds bad, but I disagree that it is not marked for time; I also disagree that "live" sounds good. For me, this particular construction is simply not possible. [...] However, in our sentence, not only do we have two different verbs, but we have two different complements. [...] For some reason, when two verbs take two different complements, the _rather than_ construction sounds brutally awful to me no matter whether it contains tense or not.





BantyMom said:


> While I generally prefer constructions to be parallel, in this case, we are talking about something that happened (they committed suicide) which must be in the past tense, to something that didn't happen (continuing to live).


_He sleeps *rather than exercises *when he is really tired._



Forero said:


> I think this one works, as a choice between strictly parallel intransitive verbs. "When he is really tired" modifies either verb and is not part of the choice. *Note: *This would not work at all with the _rather than _part first ("Rather than exercises, he ..." )





Forero said:


> The way I see it, some sentences of the type you are asking about create unavoidable conflict between two preferences we natives have. One preference we have is for what follows _rather than_ to be noun-like, as it would have to be after _instead of_, and the other preference is for what follows _rather than_ to be as parallel as possible to what precedes it, in grammatical function, in semantic meaning, and in form.


*Sources:*

http://forum.wordreference.com/threads/committed-suicide-rather-than-live-lived-as-paupers.1828719/
http://forum.wordreference.com/threads/he-went-to-jail-rather-than-pay-paid-his-fines.2710439/
http://forum.wordreference.com/threads/hong-kong-does-rather-than-ape.1765708/
http://forum.wordreference.com/threads/rather-than.1257512/
http://forum.wordreference.com/threads/rather-than.287521/
http://forum.wordreference.com/threads/rather-than.2935480/
http://forum.wordreference.com/threads/rather-than-can-it-join-two-clauses.2704373/
http://forum.wordreference.com/threads/rather-than-v-ing.2070293/
http://forum.wordreference.com/threads/rather-than-watch-or-rather-than-watched.2364599/
http://forum.wordreference.com/threads/verb-after-rather-than.1633061/


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## PaulQ

Having read (most of) the thread, am I then correct in summarising that opinion is:

"The grating wind sawed rather than blew; -> as Loob points out #31, the narrator is correcting his use of a verb.

"John's father gave him a stark choice: go out, or stay at home."

1. The boy went out (verbal) rather than {stay at home} (nominal) - one of the choices.
2. The boy went out rather than staying at home' -> The boy went out (verbal) rather than {staying at home} (verbal) - one of the choices.

"The police concluded that the boy went out rather than stayed at home." this is the correction of a verb[al]."?


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