spend money on Ving

[sitifan]

1. He spends a lot of money on entertaining friends. (F. T. Wood)

2. He has spent a small fortune on improving his property. (Zhao Zhencai)

3. I spent $99 on buying a belt. (Kang Xuan)

4. I spent 2 hours on doing my homework. (Kang Xuan)

Are the above sentences acceptable to native speakers?

 

[teechar]

The first two are fine. The third shouldn't have "buying" in it, and the fourth shouldn't have "on" in it.

 

[emsr2d2]

"on" is optional in 1 and 2 as well.

 

[jutfrank]

What do you mean by 'acceptable'?

They're all grammatical, yes, but not necessarily the natural way to express the ideas they contain (see post #2).

 

[Phaedrus]

[. . .] 3. I spent $99 on buying a belt. (Kang Xuan) [. . .]

Are the above sentences acceptable to native speakers?

I find Xuan's sentence to be the most nonnative sentence in the bunch. To me, the sentence would be much less awkward with "to buy":

I spent $99 to buy a belt.

One has to assume that the sentence is intended to be focused on spending a certain amount of money. Otherwise, the normal sentence is:

I bought a belt for $99.

The following Google stats may be of interest:

"spent a hundred dollars to buy": 72,000
"spent a hundred dollars buying": 9
"spent a hundred dollars on buying": 2

 

[emsr2d2]

Both "on buying" and "to buy" sound wordy and awkward to me. I'd use either:

1. I spent $99 on a belt.
2. I spent $99 buying a belt.

1 is much more likely in BrE. You've already used the word "spend" and associated it with money (rather than time or energy) so I see no need to include "buy".

 

[Tdol]

Both "on buying" and "to buy" sound wordy and awkward to me. I'd use either:

1. I spent $99 on a belt.
2. I spent $99 buying a belt.

The second sounds a bit unnatural to me. I'd only use the first.

 

[Phaedrus]

The "cost [someone] [monetary value]" construction also works nicely. It is often used with extraposition of an infinitival clause:

1') It costs him a lot of money to entertain friends.
2') It has cost him a small fortune to improve his property.
3') I bought a belt. It cost me $99. (I bought a belt that cost me $99.) (The belt I bought cost me $99.)

The construction works differently with (4). A gerund subject would be OK, but the sentence would suggest that the homework was an untoward imposition:

4) Doing my homework cost me 2 hours.