today i attended an interview. The employer told me that I should know some skills about the job. Today I am going to start to work on those skills. Now, I am writing a "thank you for the interview" letter to him. I want him to know that I just started to work on those skills. It's like, "You mentioned that you need an assistant who has strong drafting discovery/letter skills. I have already started working on it/I have already started to work on it." Which one is correct? Thank you.
Learn English – Which expression is correct? “I’ve already started working on it” or “I’ve already started to work on it”
gerund-vs-infinitivegerundsgrammaticalityinfinitivesletter-writing
Best Answer
Ok, I cannot translate all the work of the French author who made a distinction between: I started TO work on it and I started workING on it.
Let's just say it this way:
1) I started with TO sets up a relationship between I started and work. He says that the TO is a meta-operator, and therefore, there is a relationship between what I started and work. It also sets up a predicate.
2) I started working does not do that. Working on something is noun phrase: I started: any activity with a verb.
In this case, working is an action and I started that action. There is no meta operator so working is more full force. He calls it using the verb in notional form.
here is the important distinction he makes: La notion verbale V∅V [The verbal notion: Verb Null Set Verb: V∅V] 1 Un certain nombre de construction anglaise font usage de la notion pure et simple, d'où l'absence de to. L'absence de cet opérateur signale que l'on a affaire à une notion verbale et non à un prédicat. L'apport de V est purement sémantique puisqu'il renvoie au concept. La présence de to signale que la simple notion verbale est dépassée et que l'on s'en sert dans le cadre d'une opération qui n'a plus pour seul objet de nommer une notion mais de l'utiliser comme point de départ d'une autre opération. Il y a grammaticalisation de la notion verbale.
A certain number of English constructions make use of the notion, pure and simple, which is why the TO is not used. The absence of this operator [to] signals that we are dealing with a verbal notion and not with a predicate. The use of V is purely semantic since it refers to a concept. The presence of /to/ signals that the verbal notion is surpassed and that the /to/ is being used as part of an operation whose only point is not to name a notion but to use it as the point of departure of another operation. The verbal notion is grammaticalized. The explanatory paragraph is taken from this article about Adamczeski
The author's name and title are: Grammaire linguistique de l'anglais, Henri Adamczewski, Armand Colin