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I am struggling to learn how to use "Having" in many cases. Through my reading on many sites, I understand that below are grammatically correct (if not kindly let me know):

  1. Having seen my mother work tirelessly, it inspired me to study hard.
  2. Having been involved in many projects, it enabled me to understand real-world challenges.

But there are some cases that I still do not quite understand.

  1. Having seen my mother work tirelessly inspired me to study hard.
  2. Having been involved in many projects enabled me to understand real-world challenges.

I'm not sure if these examples are grammatically correct and understandable by natives or not.

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  • All are understandable but, as James says in his answer, the first two are not strictly correct. (Having needs to refer to a subject, I.)
    – Kate Bunting
    Commented Nov 29, 2021 at 9:24
  • For the record, I’m fairly sure “V3” is not any kind of widely-adopted terminology for any ... tense, maybe, is what you’re going for? Certainly wasn’t used at any point in any of my (entirely US) schooling. That might be jargon specific to your program or textbook or whatever, or maybe somewhat wider than that, but it isn’t universal among English speakers anyway.
    – KRyan
    Commented Nov 29, 2021 at 19:18

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These participle phrases can be added to a sentence to explain the reason for the main part of the sentence. I'd prefer the first example to be something like:

Having seen my mother work tirelessly, I was inspired to work hard.

In this case you can see that the subject of the sentence is "I".

OR the participle phrase can be the subject of a sentence. In this use it is sometimes called a gerund.

There is no need for these to use perfective (have+V3) you can have -ing verbs with no "have":

Eating the apple, I walked down the street.

Eating the apple helped me to think.

I am not keen on your "it" structure: I don't like "Eating the apple, it helped me to think". It's correct grammar, but the gerund pattern is more natural.

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  • 2
    Thank you James. Can these two forms be used interchangeably? Or is there any subtle difference? Having seen my mother work tirelessly, I was inspired to study hard. Having seen my mother work tirelessly inspired me to study hard.
    – Spacez
    Commented Nov 29, 2021 at 11:32
  • I think the difference is Passive voice versus Active voice. The first is equivalent to "I was inspired to study hard by having seen my mother work tirelessly." This is technically the same meaning as the second sentence, but is passive. The Subject is "I" while the Object is "having seen my mother work tirelessly". In Active voice, the Subject is "Having seen my mother work tirelessly" and the Object is "me" Active is where the Subject takes the action. I know I'm not explaining this the best way, so if someone wants to correct what I'm saying, you're more than welcome to.
    – RoboticRenaissance
    Commented Nov 29, 2021 at 16:06
  • @Spacez I suppose there may be some subtle difference between your examples in this comment--to me the first example puts a little more emphasis on the claim that you were inspired to study hard, while the second example to me seems like it's emphasizing the cause a little bit more. But opinions might differ from one person to another. I would add that the second example can be expressed more simply as "Seeing my mother work tirelessly inspired me to study hard"--both are fine but I don't see any important difference of meaning between them.
    – Tiercelet
    Commented Nov 29, 2021 at 17:22

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