his being vs being

Question

Being a well-known scientist, he was invited to deliver a lecture on artificial intelligence.

shouldn't be the sentence should be

his Being a well-known scientist, he was invited to deliver a lecture on artificial intelligence.

and if not why? please explain

Colin Fine · Accepted Answer · 2017-12-10 10:35:36Z

1

No. "His being a well-known scientist" is a noun phrase, and does not fit any syntactic structure there.

"Being a well-known scientist" is a participial clause, and can qualify the subject "he".

answered Dec 10, 2017 at 10:35

Colin Fine

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can you give me some contexts in which "his being" is used?
– kumar
Commented Dec 10, 2017 at 11:13
1

@ram: As subject "His being a w-k s surprised me"; as direct object "I took into account his being a w-k s" (not a good example, I can't think of a better one); indirect object "I spoke about his being a w-k s"; as object of preposition, "Despite his being a w-k s, ... ". These are all somewhat literary: many people would say "him being .. ", and in ordinary speech most people would recast the sentence to avoid this nominalisation: "I was surprised that he was .. ."; "Even though he was ... " etc.
– Colin Fine
Commented Dec 10, 2017 at 19:07
"Seeing her mother the calf starts to graze." Is the sentence correct?
– Kumar sadhu
Commented Apr 30, 2019 at 10:48
@Kumarsadhu: yes, that is grammatical. Many people would put a comma after "mother".
– Colin Fine
Commented Apr 30, 2019 at 15:14

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