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I need to know the difference between these two sentences 1)He stopped to playing football 2)He stopped playing football

tchrist
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He stopped to playing football is ungrammatical; the grammatical form would be He stopped to play football, and that would mean that he stopped whatever activity he was doing at the time, and started playing football instead, and the reason he stopped the previous activity was specifically because he wanted to play football instead.

He stopped playing football can be interpreted in two related ways: first, most immediately, he was involved in the activity of playing football, and at the time the action was being described, he decided to not play football. The second possible interpretation (and the more likely one) is that he habitually played football, but decided that he no longer wished to do so.

Jeff Zeitlin
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