You asked a very perceptive and tough question so let’s look even more closely at that lead sentence with a phrase that I described as “a grammatically faulty mélange”:
“Three of the largest organizations of nurses in the Philippines
joined legislators in eyeing to stop the volunteer nursing training program allegedly exploited by numerous private and government medical institutions.”
I said that the phrase that I have italicized above, “joined legislators in eyeing to stop the volunteer nursing program” is grammatically awkward if not outright faulty. This is because in that construction, the infinitive phrase “to stop the volunteer nursing program” as the direct object of the active verb “eyeing” is a grammatical combination that doesn’t seem to work properly and doesn’t sound right.
In such grammatical combinations, the active verb usually dictates whether an infinitive or a gerund can be used as a direct object. (Remember now that the infinitive and the gerund are both
verbals, or verb forms that don’t function as verbs but as nouns.) In English, in fact, some verbs can only take the infinitive as a verbal direct object, other verbs can only take the gerund as a verbal direct object, and the rest can take either the infinitive or a gerund as a verbal direct object.
Here are some common verbs that can only take the infinitive as a verbal direct object: “agree,” “appear,” “arrange,” “ask,” “beg,” “care,” “claim,” “decide,” “demand,” “deserve,” “desire,” “expect,” “fail,” “forget,” “hire,” “hope,” “intend,” “learn,” “manage,” mean” “need,” “offer,” “order,” “prepare,” “pretend,” “promise,” “refuse,” “regret,” “ seem,” “ten,” “try,” “wait,” “want,” and “wish.”
See how the verb-infinitive combination works: “We
agreed to reimburse him for expenses.” (In contrast, the verb-gerund combination doesn’t: “We
agreed reimbursing him for expenses.) “She
cared to clean the premises regularly while we were away.” (The verb-gerund combination doesn’t: “She
cared cleaning the premises regularly while we were away.”)
And now here are some verbs that can only take the gerund as a verbal direct object: “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,” “suggest,” “tolerate,” “try,” “understand,” and “imagine.”
See how the verb-gerund combination works: “She
admitted taking the funds surreptitiously from the depositor’s account.” (The verb-infinitive combination doesn’t work: “She
admitted to take the funds surreptitiously from the depositor’s account.”) “They
considered commuting the death sentence to life imprisonment.” (The verb-infinitive combination doesn’t work: “They
considered to commute the death sentence to life imprisonment.”)
Now, going back to the phrase “joined legislators in eyeing to stop the volunteer nursing program,” you’ll notice that it’s in the same league as the last verb-infinitive combination above that doesn’t work properly: “They
considered to commute the death sentence to life imprisonment.” In fact, the grammatical awkwardness of the verb-infinitive combination “eyeing to stop” will become obvious when we convert the progressive-form verb “eyeing” to its past tense, as in “Together with the legislators, we
eyed to stop the volunteer nursing program.” This time the verb-infinitive combination isn’t only grammatically awkward but obviously grammatically faulty as well—and people who know their English definitely won’t be caught writing or talking like that.
The obvious alternative is to use the verb-gerund combination, as follows: “Three of the largest organizations of nurses in the Philippines joined legislators in
eyeing stopping the volunteer nursing training program, which is allegedly being exploited by numerous private and government medical institutions.” Nothing’s grammatically wrong with the “eyeing stopping” combination, of course, but it sounds so cacophonous that people with an ear for good English simply wouldn’t use it.
Indeed, the transitive verb “eye,” which means “to contemplate or consider,” seems to work well only when the direct object is not a verbal but a noun (or pronoun), as in “The car buyer,
eyeing the choices, decided not to make a purchase” and in “They
eyed us with suspicion.” This is actually why I suggested changing the infinitive “to stop” in that sentence to the noun “stoppage”: “Three of the largest organizations of nurses in the Philippines joined legislators in
eyeing the stoppage of the volunteer nursing training program, which is allegedly being exploited by numerous private and government medical institutions.
In my book
Give Your English the Winning Edge, I have devoted four chapters to explaining this grammatical phenomenon—I’d call it a quirk of English, in fact— involving verbs that have an infinitive phrase or gerund phrase as direct object. It’s a complication that admittedly will stump a lot of English learners, for it needs a lot of advanced knowledge in English grammar and semantics to be clearly understood, but there it is.
