Korean Job Discussion Forums

[Betty Rubble]

Hi grammar gurus!

Why is this sentence wrong? "I am afraid to fall into the swimming pool"

It sounds okay to me but the book says it is grammatically incorrect. I guess it would sound better to say "I am afraid of falling..." but I don't know how to explain why the first sentence is wrong.

Thanks!

[cubanlord]

[Ekuboko]

Depends on what the speaker intends to say and/or the context.

If the speaker is saying "I don't want to walk beside the pool, for fear of falling in", then the sentence is wrong. The correct grammar would be "I'm afraid of falling in the pool".

However, if there is an organized "let's fall in the pool and see who can make the biggest splash" contest, the speaker could very well say "I'm afraid to fall in the pool, because I might make a small splash and get my hair wet."

[Atassi]

I doubt the book is an international book. Is the publisher Korean?

I'd tell the students that the book is wrong. I'd never mark a student wrong for using that sentence.

[Woland]

It's grammatical. Ekubuko has it right as a difference between 'afraid of' and 'afraid to'. You can use the concordancer at www.lextutor.ca to suss out the difference. But to summarize, with 'afraid of' the fear is of some effect the object of the preposition will have on the subject of the clause, while with 'afraid to' the fear is of the effect of something the subject of the clause might do.

[tomwaits]

Nothing wrong but perhaps they want students to say I'm is required.

[contrarian]

It is "technically correct" in rare circumstances. In general usage it is wrong. As someone else said, I would never mark a Korean student wrong for that. I would draw the general use to his attention.

[fancypants]

afraid + "to" is always followed by the present simple form of the verb.
E.g. I am afraid to swim with sharks.


afraid + "of" is always followed by a gerund (a progressive verb acting as a noun).
E.g. I am afraid of swimming with sharks.

In this case, the sentences are semantically equivalent because afraid can be followed by either "to" or "of".

A simple way to tell whether a progressive is being used as a gerund or a verb is to replace the -ing form in question with "it"; if it makes grammatical sense, then it is a gerund.

For example, "I am afraid of swimming" becomes "I am afraid of it".
"I was swimming when I heard the phone ring" becomes "I was IT when the phone rang" - in the latter case "falling" is clearly a verb and not a gerund.