SC: Present Participle v. Infinitive

[ghong14]

I was reading pg 253 of the SC MGMAT Guide which talks about the difference between using the Present Participle v. the Infinitive form.

Present Participle: Investors sold the stock rapidly causing panic.
Infinitive: Investors sold the stock rapidly to cause panic.

The MGMAT SC guide says the present participle expresses a result: the rapid sale of the stock caused panic and that the infinitive here expresses intention the investors wanted to cause panic.

Can an instructor please clarify how to apply this when we see it in an SC questions. I have seen questions in the OG Guide where there are sentence splits between present participle and infinitive form. For example, the answer choice will be it was not until almost 1900 that scholars and critics seriouslybegan studing versus it was not almost until 1900 when scholars and critics began to seriosuly study.

If you can think of any other examples to discuss this would be great!! :)

[tim]

first, if you have a complete verb followed by an infinitive versus -ing split, you should refer to the rule in the book. the example you quote though is somewhat different in that both versions of the split are PART of the verb - "began doing" something and "began to do" something are both acceptable verb forms..