"look forward to meet you", or "to meeting you"?

Question

Which one is correct?

I look forward to meet you during the coming festival.

or

I look forward to meeting you during the coming festival.

Please help me with explanation.

According to what the dictionary tells you which one do you think is correct? — None, Jul 10 '14 at 07:56
@Laure I was expecting the first one as infinitive (to meet). but it is second one as dictionary tells. thanks Please post as answer I will accept. — A. Prasad, Jul 10 '14 at 07:58
If you think your question is not necessary since you have found the answer on your own you can delete it. — None, Jul 10 '14 at 08:08
@Laure - That's a bit harsh, I think. I wouldn't normally expect to find the answer to this question in a dictionary. M-W only gives look forward : to anticipate with pleasure or satisfaction <looking forward to your visit>; Dictionary.com isn't much help, neither here nor here. I'm all for exhorting people to use the dictionary, but I don't think this question is "easily answerable with a dictionary." — J.R., Jul 10 '14 at 09:42
@Laure - RE: Well, OP did find it as soon as they looked, didn't they. We can't know that for sure; all we know is that the O.P. found it when they clicked on your link, which is hardly the same thing. Less than half of these entries would even point you in the right direction. Moreover, the question asks specifically for an explanation, which is even harder to find in the dictionary. I try not to to vote with "Easily answerable with a dictionary" unless just about any dictionary would do the trick and the entry to check would be obvious. — J.R., Jul 11 '14 at 01:44
@Laure - No, that post isn't obsolete, but neither is this one. My sole point in my comments to you here is that an answer may be easily found in a dictionary by a native, but I don't think that equates to an answer being easily found in a dictionary by a non-native. It depends on a few different factors: in this case, which word(s) to look up (look, forward, look forward, or look forward to?) along with what examples might be given. I think this community needs to remember that. — J.R., Jul 11 '14 at 08:12
As I said in my initial comment, I had no problem with you providing the link, but the way you've worded your comment makes it sound like, "This is so obvious, just crack open any dictionary and you'll find the answer staring you right in the face." I'm thinking you found a great dictionary entry that answers the first part of the question, but I don't think that helpful information would be trivial to find without your link. I think your information would have made a better answer than a basis for a comment saying, "Since this is so trivial, why don't you consider deleting your question?" — J.R., Jul 11 '14 at 08:16

StoneyB on hiatus · Answer 1 · 2014-07-10T11:41:57.410

The to in this expression is the preposition, not the 'infinitive marker'. Consequently it requires an NP—a noun or a noun-like term—as its object.

In this case the object we want to use is an entire clause: “I meet you during the coming festival”. There are three ways^† of transforming this into a construction which may act as an NP: an infinitive clause, a that clause or a gerund clause:

infinitive clause: ... me to meet you during the coming festival.
that clause: ... that I meet you during the coming festival.
gerund clause: ... me/my meeting you during the coming festival.

However, English verbs are picky; each verb has preferences and ‘licenses’ (permits) only specific types of clause for its complements. In the case of look forward to, only the gerund clause is licensed, so that is what you must use.

I look forward to [me/my meeting you during the coming festival].

There is a final operation before this becomes idiomatic: when the subject of the complement clause is the same as the subject of its head clause, it is deleted. That is the case here, so me (or my) is deleted:

I look forward to ~~me/my~~ meeting you during the coming festival.

I know of no reason why look forward to doesn’t like that clauses; it just doesn’t. But it is a general rule that phrasal verbs whose last piece is the preposition to don’t take infinitive complements, because that would put the two tos next to each other, which would be confusing:

^∗I look forward to to meet you during the coming festival.

^{† There is a fourth way, a free relative clause; but it is used to make a specific constituent of the clause the object, not the entire clause, so I ignore it here.}

^{∗ marks an expression as unacceptable}

score 3 · Accepted Answer · answered Jul 10 '14 at 08:01

3

There are some set rules, avoiding them will make is sound unnatural or incorrect.

The pattern with look forward to is

Look forward to + Noun

Look forward to + verb-ing

These are set pattern, not following them will make the sentence incorrect.

answered Jul 10 '14 at 08:01

Man_From_India

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"look forward to meet you", or "to meeting you"?

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