Recently a person I am doing a language exchange with asked me a question regarding a sentence you can typically find at the end of a letter:
Looking forward to talking to you soon.
The question was: why should we use the preposition “to” in this context? I will answer this in point 1, below.
1. “to” as a preposition in a phrasal verb
So, why should we use the preposition “to” in the phrase Looking forward to talking to you soon?
The answer is: we need this preposition because it is a part of the phrasal verb to look forward to, which is made up of
verb + particle + preposition, as in
look + forward + to.
In other words, this expression does not exist without the preposition “to”.
Ex.:
- I am looking forward to the holidays.
- I am looking forward to the end of the exams.
An important rule to remember
As you can see, in these two examples we have a noun or a group of nouns acting as the object: the holidays, the end of the exams.
If you can
-
-
- use a noun (or a group of nouns)
- after a preposition
- as the object of your sentence,
- after a preposition
- use a noun (or a group of nouns)
-
then you cannot have an infinitive as an object instead.
In other words the sentence I am looking forward to visit Paris is incorrect!
Therefore, in this context, where we do have a preposition, the only verbal form you can use is a gerund, which has an -ing ending. The reason for this is that a gerund works almost like a noun: it is not conjugated, it merely refers to the action or process expressed by the verb.
With the phrasal verb to look forward to, we could have:
- I am looking forward to [visiting Edinburgh].
- I am looking forward to [meeting my friends].
- I am looking forward to [working on my new project].
2. “To” as part of an infinitive
In an infinitive form, (which, again, we cannot have with look forward to), the “to” element is not a preposition, it is merely a part of the infinitive:
to write, to hear, to listen, to work, etc..
If we parse two sentences a) and b), one with an infinitive form and one with a phrasal verb (with preposition) followed by a gerund, the differences appear clearly.
a)
b)
In sentence a), to, as an element of the infinitive is a part of what comes after it, namely learn.
In sentence b), to, as a preposition, is a part of what comes before it, in this case looking forward.
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