Being able to

Question

"The series aims to stimulate discussion about the importance of leaders being able to adapt to working in the new system by developing new skills, building trust, leading through influence and acting courageously."
I read the above while searching for "matrix team working".
What is the grammatical form and function of "being" in "being able to..."?

Anonymous · Accepted Answer

JigneshbharatiWhat is the grammatical form and function of "being" in "being able to..."?

It's a gerund. If they had used the correct possessive before it, "leaders' being able to", that would have been more apparent if not any less clumsy.

CalifJim · Answer

Jigneshbharati... the importance of leaders being able to adapt to working in the new system ...
grammatical form and function

'being' is a gerund. It's the head of the gerund clause that starts with 'leaders'. The whole clause is everything from 'leaders' to the end of the sentence. 'leaders' is the subject of that clause.

The function of that clause is "complement of the preposition of".

You can rephrase like this:

The series aims to stimulate discussion about how important it is for leaders to be able to adapt to working in the new system ....

Here there is an infinitive clause instead of a gerund clause. In these kinds of clauses the word 'for' marks the subject of the clause and 'to' marks the predicate. Some people call this a "FOR ... TO ..." clause.

It is the adjective 'important' that allows the use of an infinitive clause here.

The base sentence that is transformed into either a gerund clause or an infinitive clause above is this one:

Leaders are able to adapt to working in the new system ...

By the way, can you see the other gerund clause in there? This one has no subject, so we take the previous subject 'leaders' as its subject.

CJ

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