What would be the correct structure for "would rather…than…" in past aspect?
1.) would rather have v3 than v3
ex. He would rather have gone out than stayed.
2.) would rather have v3 than vinf
ex. He would rather have gone out than stay.
I have tried to find some references but none exactly match the case.
For example, from the Cambridge website:
When we want to refer to the past we use would rather + have + -ed form (perfect infinitive without to):
She would rather have spent the money on a holiday. (The money wasn’t spent on a holiday.)
I’d rather have seen it at the cinema than on DVD. (I saw the film on DVD.)
Best Answer
You first example (would rather have gone out than stayed) is the more normal. It maintains the parallelism, so that both sides of the comparison are in the same tense
If you use the infinitive stay, then what you are comparing is the past infinitive have gone out with a present infinitive stay. There's nothing ungrammatical about that, but it's rather unusual. I can think of some cases where it is more likely, for example:
which means something like he wishes he had gone out .... (The reason I think this is more likely is that be here is something he is doing right now. One of the meanings of stay is the continuing state, including right now; but in contrasting it with go out, it is more natural to interpret it as his decision to stay, which presumably happened in the past.