Dave's ESL Cafe's Student Discussion Forums

[Jerry Chen]

Hello,

As the sentence says, "He is ashamed of having failed."

Why is "be ashamed of " followed by "having +V-en"?

Can't we use "be ashamed of Ving"?

Thanks for your reply!!!

[Anuradha Chepur]

This is the explanation I can offer:

A preposition precedes a noun or a pronoun, and 'to' precedes the verb in to-inf. Gerunds (Ving used as a noun, as in "Walking is good for health.") count as nouns. In your sentence, 'having' is used as a gerund, so it is acceptable. If you were to use 'failing', it would be a verb and not a gerund.

'I am ashamed of having a brother like you.' is bad, because here 'having' is a verb and not a gerund.

'I am ashamed to have a brother like you.' is good because here you have used to-inf.

In 'I am ashamed of my brother', the preoposition is followed by a pronoun.

[Jerry Chen]

Thanks for your reply!

Now my question is:

In this sentence, "He is ashamed of having failed." Is it that we use "having failed" instead of "failing" to show that he failed ? In other words, he is ashamed that he failed. We use "having +pp" in this case to show a past experience. Am I right?

How about "He isn't ashamed of asking questions in public"? Does that mean that he is always courageous to raise his hand to ask questions whenever he has questions? And "He isn't ashamed of having asked questions in public." Is it that he isn't ashamed that he once asked questions in public? Am I right?

Thanks for being of great help to me!!

[Lorikeet]

[Anuradha Chepur]

The dictionaries I consulted suggest that after 'ashamed of', we need to use a to-inf. However, they were non commital on the use of ing-inf.

If 'ashamed of + ving' is acceptable according to a native speaker's intuitions, then the Ving here has got to be a gerund.