4.1 That clauses and infinitives as prepositional complements

Rule: That clauses and infinitive clauses cannot be prepositional complements.

Examples of errors:

1. An indication of that we have not decided yet is the controversy over nuclear power.
2. But the campaign was not successful in terms of that they led to a new way, a democratic way of governing.
3. Medical science has given us nutritional reasons for not to be fat.
4. The students should get a feeling for to say things in the foreign language.
5. I do only some sport to be fit and for to live a long time.

Although infinitive and that clauses frequently have nominal functions as subject or complement of a verb, they cannot occur as complements of prepositions-unlike, for example, -ing participle clauses:

He insisted on going/*to go/*that he go first.

(1) illustrates the point made in 1.10.9, namely, that that clauses can be transformed into appositive modifiers of fact (or other head nouns) in order to make them usable in nominal functions (here, object of the preposition of). Alternatively, of course, the preposition can simply be dropped, with the that clause then becoming an appositive modifier of indication. Alternatives in (2) to *in terms of that they led would be:

in terms of leading
in the sense of leading
in (the sense that) that they led

Rule 4.1 does not apply in the case of infinitive clauses introduced by wh- words (e.g. the question of how to do it--cf. 1.10.2).