"Αυτός είχε σταματήσει να παίζει."

Translation: He had stopped playing.

[spdl79]

Hello! Just wondering if someone could help me out. We've got two acceptable translations here - 'he had stopped playing', and 'he had stopped to play'. They have very different meanings. If we heard or read αυτός είχε σταματήσει να παίζει, would we just have to infer the meaning from its context? Or is there another way of formulating the sentence to make it clearer whether play was terminated or begun?

[romualdGyorgy]

From the Greek sentence, I understand that he had been playing, and then he stopped.

If I want to say that he stopped in order to play (he was doing some other thing before that), is αυτός είχε σταματήσει για να παίζει correct?

[troll1995]

Αυτός είχε σταματήσει για να παίξει. Παίξει must be used because it shows that he played once (and so does the verb είχε σταματήσει, so he cannot have stopped once but played a lot of times) otherwise it would be σταματούσε για να παίζει=he was stopping (again and again) in order to play (again and again)

[Jon345104]

So He had stopped to play is incorrect I wrote that DL marked it right