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I have a doubt about the following sentence.

"Vaccinating children has become increasingly popular these days."

According to my understanding children is plural so, this sentence suppose to be like this

Vaccinating children have become increasingly popular these days.

is this correct?

Thanks

Andrew Leach
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Ash
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    Each of the alternatives is grammatical, but actually means something different, so "correct" is moot. Both are strictly correct, but only one will mean what you think it should. What do you think the sentence should mean? – Andrew Leach Oct 21 '18 at 20:58
  • I've never seen a child actually in the act of vaccinating before... – Jim Oct 21 '18 at 20:59
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    No, it isn't correct. It is not the children who have become popular, but the practice of vaccination. – Kate Bunting Oct 21 '18 at 20:59
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    Try getting rid of the word that is not really important to understand the sentence; what do you end up with? Do you end up with “Children have become increasingly popular” or “Vaccinating has become increasingly popular”? (Historically speaking, I’m fairly sure that children have always been quite popular; we’ve been having them for ages, at least.) – Janus Bahs Jacquet Oct 21 '18 at 21:53
  • See also “Doing such stunts ARE punishable” – herisson Oct 21 '18 at 23:27

1 Answers1

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In literature:

Additionally, there is a growing body of research wherein nasal vaccination has become increasingly popular. google books

Thus, as in:

Vaccinating (a gerund) children has become increasingly popular

is the grammatically correct form.

lbf
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  • Vaccinating is not really a noun here – if it were, it wouldn’t be able to take an object (children). Rather, it’s a gerund, which is a verbal form that has certain noun-like properties (such as the ability to be the head of a noun phrase), but retains certain verb-like properties as well (such as the ability to take objects). – Janus Bahs Jacquet Oct 21 '18 at 21:51
  • @JanusBahsJacquet noted and so edited. – lbf Oct 21 '18 at 23:07