What verb form follows than? Which would be considered
correct:
(a) It's better than buying that store.
(b) It's better than to buy at that store.
And what is the function of than in the sentence above?
Vera Mello
vera vcqm@ruralsp.com.br
Since (semantically speaking) there's a strong connection between the
after-the-than phrase and the subject pronoun "it,"
you must conclude that if "It" refers to a gerund (since very
few infinitives function as subjects) then "buy" must also
be a gerund. If "it" refers to an infinitive, the same applies.
To wit:
Buying a car from her is better than
buying a car from him.
To stay up until all hours is better than
to sleep through all the action.
Linda
lcahill@miami.edu
Than can function as a preposition or as a conjunction.
"When than is followed by a noun or pronoun,
it functions as if it were a preposition. When followed by a clause,
it functions as if it were a conjunction." (L.G. Alexander, Longman
English Grammar, Longman, 1988.)
According to this description, than in Sentence (a)
can be considered a preposition, since buying, a gerund,
is the noun form of the verb. It could be paraphrased in this way:
(a) It's better than that.
In sentence (b), than can be considered a conjunction:
(b) It's better than (it is) to buy at that store.
So, both sentences would be correct.
It's important to keep Linda Cahill's thoughts about parallelism in
mind; the referent of "it" in "it's better" should
determine whether to use the gerund or infinitive form in a sentence
like this.