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Helping others is a good habit.

Which part of speech is "Helping" & "others" here? I think helping here is noun & others is pronuoun.

Raiyeesha Mostak
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  • Good question. OP could have shown some background effort, though. – Kris Mar 04 '20 at 13:00
  • @GregLee Helping is definitely no verb. It's a gerund i.e. a noun built from a verb. We can tell this because a gerund can have an article (the helping), a pronoun (my helping), an adjective (the most effective helping), and could have a genitive (the helping's power). – Ben A. Mar 04 '20 at 13:19
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    @BenA. "the most effective helping others is a good habit" is not a grammatical sentence. You can't analyse helping on its own. – Matt E. Эллен Mar 04 '20 at 14:12
  • @MattE.Эллен Of course, I can. I wanted to demonstrate the capabilities of a gerund. For this, I don't need to take the entire sentence in question. – Ben A. Mar 04 '20 at 14:16
  • But by putting it in the sentence you see it fails all but one of your gerund tests. So in the sentence how can you say it is a gerund? – Matt E. Эллен Mar 04 '20 at 14:24
  • @MattE.Эллен I have tried to show all possible capabilities of a gerund. I haven't said that all of them can be applied in the sentence in question. On the other hand, the question is about grammar, not about style. The example you have provided is grammatically correct. It's only stilistically a mess. – Ben A. Mar 04 '20 at 14:37
  • @MattE.Эллен 'So in the sentence how can you say it is a gerund?' The causality chain goes like this: What is the subject of the sentences in question? Helping others is the subject. What is a subject? It's a noun or a noun group. So, helping others is a noun group (with the noun helping). If helping is a noun it has to be a gerund. – Ben A. Mar 04 '20 at 14:55
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    Helping is not a noun. It's a verb form, and it's got a direct object. That's verb territory. Distinguish between constituents (noun phrases, clauses, etc.) that function as nouns and nouns themselves. Individual nouns are single words. As has been said repeatedly to no apparent effect, helping others is a noun phrase and the subject of is. That does not make anything in it a noun. – John Lawler Mar 04 '20 at 16:39
  • @BenA. You're right that occurrence with an article or a modifying adjective is a property of nouns, not verbs. However, apparently, you haven't actually looked at the relevant evidence. Just try adding an article or an adjective to your original example and see what you get. – Greg Lee Mar 04 '20 at 23:09
  • @JohnLawler According to Wiktionary a gerund is a verbal form that functions as a verbal noun. Here, two statements are thinkable: 'As a gerund is a verbal form it is a verb.' or 'As a gerund functions as a noun it is a noun.' I am convinced that the second is more suitable because we produce a noun from another part of speech, which is exactly our purpose when we build the -ing form. – Ben A. Mar 05 '20 at 08:57
  • @GregLee Sorry, I don't get your point. I have already added an article, a pronoun, an adjective and have built a genitive in my original post addressed to you. The outcomes are grammatically correct. We are not talking about style here as I mentioned before. – Ben A. Mar 05 '20 at 09:04
  • @JohnLawler By the way, I can't support the inconsequence shown in the examples of Nominalization: Having added -ility, -ness, -y, -ure, -ation, -ment, -al we have nouns formed from verbs. But having added -ing we still have a verb used as a noun? And the reason is...? Only because the present active participle of a verb - as used in the continuous/progressive tenses - has the same form? Oh, I assume that helping in helping hands is a verb for you (a verb used as an adjective) rather than an adjective, isn't it. – Ben A. Mar 05 '20 at 09:30
  • @JohnLawler We can also argue from etymology. A gerundium is which is to be carried out. Which doesn't refer to a verb. It refers to a noun - here, to an action. The gerund helping is no less a noun than help. – Ben A. Mar 05 '20 at 09:46
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    @BenA. Begin with the entire! example. Here, I'll do it for you. "The helping others is a good habit." "Open helping others is a good habit." See? Both ungrammatical. On the other hand, "Openly helping others is a good habit." See? Grammatical. If "helping" is really a noun, how come it can't be modified by an adjective, but it can be modified by an adverb? – Greg Lee Mar 05 '20 at 16:55
  • @BenA. No, Greg and John are right. They're professionals in this field and know what they're talking about. Helping in "helping others" is a verb here, only a verb, and nothing but a verb. Plus "gerund" is not a part of speech! Lastly, please don't bring Latin into this. It has no place here. See [latin.se] for that. – tchrist Mar 06 '20 at 05:26

2 Answers2

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In the example "Helping others is a good habit", "helping" is a verb and not a noun. Since "helping others" is the subject of the sentence, it is a noun phrase, and ordinarily the head of a noun phrase is a noun, but not always. Consider the homily "To err is human", where the subject noun phrase "to err" doesn't contain any noun.

So from the fact that "helping others" is a subject, from the fact that it is a noun phrase, we can't conclude that "helping" is a noun. It might be, it probably is, but maybe not.

If we look within the subject noun phrase, "helping" appears to be a verb, not a noun. It can be modified by an adverb, but not by an adjective: "Openly helping others is a good habit", *"Open helping others is a good habit". Nouns can be modified by adjectives but not adverbs, so this indicates that "helping" is a verb.

Nouns take preceding articles (to form a noun phrase), but verbs don't. Applying this as a test, we see that "helping" in the example must not be a noun: *"The helping others is a good habit."

However, "helping" could also be a noun, since there is a suffix "-ing" that forms nouns from verbs. "Helping" as a noun is a little awkward, but other verbs converted to nouns with this suffix are okay. However, in the example, "helping" cannot be a noun, because it has a direct object, "others". Verbs take direct objects but nouns don't. (Logical direct objects after a noun have to be converted to prepositional phrases with "of".)

Greg Lee
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  • Describing "helping" as having properties of both a noun and a verb without identifying it as a gerund is like describing a mule as having both properties of a donkey and a horse without ever calling it a mule. You miss a larger point. – JRodge01 Mar 06 '20 at 12:15
  • @JRodge01 But I didn't do that. I didn't ascribe any noun properties at all to gerunds. They're verbs -- just verbs. I'm aware that some say gerunds have some properties of nouns and some of verbs, but not me. They're verbs. The phrase category that contains them is a VP, not a NP. – Greg Lee Mar 07 '20 at 02:21
  • So you don't identify gerunds as nouns. This means you disagree with the definition of gerund provided by Merriam Webster, Oxford, and Wikitionary, among others. Can you provide any sources that support your viewpoint? – JRodge01 Mar 07 '20 at 03:38
  • @JRodge01 Evidence matters. Definitions don't. Linguistics is not about terminology. I gave my evidence. – Greg Lee Mar 08 '20 at 00:23
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"Helping" is a noun. It is considered a gerund, which is when an "-ing" verb is treated as a noun.

"Others" is a pronoun. It is referring to another unspecified group.

JRodge01
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    Helping others is a noun, or rather a noun phrase. Helping by itself is a gerund, which is a verb, if you're not playing with the full deck. The OP appears to be trying to do grammar by parsing individual words. Works great for Latin, but doesn't work for English because we don't have much to parse except constructions like phrases and clauses, and lots more parts of speech have been discovered in the last century. Modern science marches on. – John Lawler Mar 04 '20 at 16:32
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    This answer is wrong. Please read the above comments on the question to see why. There have been many discussions of gerunds previously on English SE. This is a very tricky part of English grammar, and many, many people get it wrong. – Greg Lee Mar 05 '20 at 17:02
  • Comments are not for extended discussion; this conversation has been moved to chat. – tchrist Mar 06 '20 at 14:17