Changing the position of “for/to”

Question

Let's say that this is our original sentence.

I am ready for our meeting.

I think the following one is also acceptable, not terrible.

For our meeting, I am ready.

But if it was

I am ready to meet you.

We could not say

To meet you, I am ready.

Or if it was

I am ready for you to come to me.

We could not say

For you to come to me, I am ready.

So, why?

Why when there is just "for", we can put it at the beginning (it is unusual but at least understandable)

But we cant put the other two at the beginning? Thanks.

Downvoted because your suppositions are incorrect and we don't want to have an unsuspecting learner be misled. For our meeting I am ready is not really idiomatic although it is not ungrammatical. It takes a very special case for it to be idiomatic. For our meeting, I'm ready. For the pub crawl afterwards, I'm not so sure. There has to be compelling reason to reorder the phrases in that unnatural way. The same unnatural flip-flop could be done with any of those sentences, if the utterance supports it. — Tᴚoɯɐuo, Jun 22 '18 at 17:51
Okay but can you say: "To come to our meeting, I am ready. For the pub crawl afterwards, I am not so sure."? I don't think so. Putting "for" at the first can be possible but what about "to"? — Jawel, Jun 22 '18 at 18:34
The parallelism is designed to highlight a contrast. The more you obscure the parallelism, the more it will seem as though the word order is unnatural for no apparent reason. But you could indeed say To come three thousand miles for a family reunion seems reasonable, but to fly all that way to attend a soccer match that's airing on TV seems a bit much. — Tᴚoɯɐuo, Jun 22 '18 at 19:09
This reminds me of the late Sir Bruce Forsyth's famous catchphrase "Nice to see you, to see you nice." — Weather Vane, Jun 22 '18 at 19:45

Jason Bassford · Accepted Answer · 2018-06-22 20:41:15Z

Strictly speaking, I believe that your original rephrasing is actually incorrect and that it should be reconstructed this way:

I am ready for our meeting.
Ready for our meeting, I am.

Which makes it sound like Yoda from Star Wars—and not something that would normally be said—but which is nonetheless syntactical.

The other sentences would all follow the same pattern:

Ready to meet you, I am.
Read for you to come to me, I am.

In short, the subject and main verb simply move to the end of the sentence, preceded by a comma.

In your first example, you had also moved the preposition for.

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