We would be far more likely to say "I gave up doing/Istopped doing" than "I started to stop doing".
Real sentences are always easy to work with than fragments.
Let's say you have a few bad habits. You leave dirty dishes in the sink overnight. You interrupt your spouse a lot. You eat when you're stressed. You've resolved to eliminate these things, but you know it won't be an instant process.
I'm starting to stop leaving dishes in the sink overnight.
I'm starting to stop eating for stress relief.
I can see using those sentences.
Do you mean something like "I started to not smoke ten years ago"?
I agree with you, but the original question was "Is 'start not to do/begin not to do' grammatically correct and does it make sense?" as opposed to "starting to stop". So would you say "I'm starting to not leave dishes in the sink overnight"?
Yes, something like that. But is 'start to not smoke' grammatically OK? Not 'start not to smoke'?
My feeling (and that's all it is):"I started to not smoke" is not quite the same as "I started not to smoke". However, I'm struggling to find a way of explaining the nuance. I'll keep thinking.
My feeling (and that's all it is):
"I started to not smoke" (e.g. after dinner) - I started to do something positive after dinner. That something was the conscious act of refraining from smoking.
"I started not to smoke after dinner" - It started to happen that, after dinner, I no longer smoked.
That's my (personal) feeling,though I'd rephrase you first paraphrase as 'conscious decision converning refraining'. I think you'd need several native speakers to agree before you could take it as fact. Even if some do agree, I think that many native speakers might simply feel that 'not to smoke' is more natural, and 'to not smoke' perhaps a little more emphatic. Perhaps.So it means that:
- "I started to not smoke." = conscious decision concerning smoking.
- "I started not to smoke." = on some unconscious level I stopped smoking, without planning to act upon my habit.
That's my (personal) feeling,.