That experience of yours will happen again and again unless you clearly understand that infinitives and gerunds, although both verbals or verb forms that function as nouns, are not freely interchangeable and mutually equivalent. In English, some verbs can take either a gerund or an infinitive as direct object, but other verbs can only take the gerund as direct object. As you surmised correctly, certain verbs indeed have a bias against an infinitive partner. It also works the other way around, though, for other verbs in turn do have a bias against gerund partners. Some verbs balk and just won’t work when paired with the wrong verbal.
This explains why your word processor underlined the words “to” and “assign” with two green strings and suggested you use “assigning” instead in this sentence: “I
suggest to assign a doctor that would handle all the walk-in appointments.” It was telling you that they were a wrong combination. Of course, following your word processor’s suggestion, you came up with this construction that reads right and sounds right: “I
suggest assigning a doctor that would handle all the walk-in appointments.”
But the big question, of course, is why? Well, I think we can say that it’s one of the quirks of the English language. The verb “suggest” just happens to be one of the verbs that can only take the gerund as direct object. Here are some of the other verbs that behave that way: “admit,” “advise,” “appreciate,” “anticipate,” “avoid,” “consider,” “delay,” “deny,” “discuss,” “enjoy,” “excuse,” “finish,” “keep,” “mind,” “miss,” “postpone,” “practice,” “quit,” “recall,” “recommend,” “regret,” “resent,” “resist,” “resume,” “risk,” “tolerate,” “try,” “understand,” and “imagine.”
Pick any one of those verbs. “Admit”? No go: “I
admit to assign a doctor that would handle all the walk-in appointments.” Correct: “I
admit assigning a doctor that would handle all the walk-in appointments.”
In contrast, there are certain verbs that can take either a gerund or an infinitive as direct object, among them “attempt,” “begin,” “start,” “leave,” “stop,” “continue,” “love,” “like,” “dislike,” “hate,” “remember,” “forget,” “neglect,” “regret,” “intend,” “plan,” “permit,” “plan,” “prefer,” “propose,” “try,” and “mean.”
Pick any one of those verbs. “Attempt”? Correct with an infinitive as direct object: “I
attempted to assign a doctor that would handle all the walk-in appointments.” Also correct with a gerund as direct object: “I
attempted assigning a doctor that would handle all the walk-in appointments.”
Do we always have to play it by ear when making a choice between a gerund or infinitive as direct object? To have a good ear for them helps a lot, but there are actually some ground rules for making that choice from the semantic standpoint. I suggest you check out Section 5- “Harnessing the Various Grammar Structures” of my book
Give Your English the Winning Edge. I have devoted four chapters to a comprehensive discussion of how gerunds and infinitives work, by themselves or in the form of phrases.
