Hello, everyone. Please tell me which one is right and why.
Rather than go to college, he joined the army.
Rather than went to college, he joined the army.
Thanks in advance.
***** NOT A TEACHER *****
Good morning, Yuriya.
(1) As one American president used to say: I feel your pain.
(2) Yes, "rather than" is SUPER WEIRD.
(3) In fact, some people try to avoid it. They use "instead of" + gerund:
Instead of going to college, he joined the army.
(4) I found a great (and short) article on the Web. If you google,
maybe you can find it. It comes from THE AMERICAN HERITAGE BOOK OF
ENGLISH USAGE, 1996. The title of the article is "rather than," and it's in
the section entitled "Style: Parallelism, Passives, Redundancy, and
Wordiness."
(a) It's the clearest explanation that an ordinary person like me could
ever hope to find. It REALLY will help you!
(5) Yes, you are 100% correct: If the phrase "rather than" starts the
sentence, then there are some rules; if "rather than" follows the main
verb, then there are other rules!!!
(6) The only good news is that native speakers use all kinds of
combinations, and nobody really cares that much.
(a) The bad news is that your second sentence is NOT accepted
by native speakers.
(7) You can do what I do: every time I read something that uses
"rather than," I copy it in my notebook. So far, I have 25 different
combinations to study.
Have a nice day!
P . S. I cannot explain why your second sentence is not acceptable.
Hopefully, someone will explain the matter to you and me.