ing as noun or verb

[Monica]

Hello! Sorry, I’ve got one of those horrible grammar terminology questions to ask you. In the following sentence, I’m supposed to decide whether the section between brackets is a noun phrase or a clause:
With two white grandfathers, and having been brought up as a Methodist in a Roman Catholic community, Walcott is ideally placed to express the Caribbean’s confusions of cultural identity.
Apparently, it’s a noun phrase, but I can’t really see why, as the verb is declined as a present perfect passive, and so, to my understanding, is working as a verb. Could someone help me with this one, please?

[Jamie (K)]

We can help you, but which part is between brackets?

[Monica]

Ooops! Sorry, I meant between commas

[Jamie (K)]

The phrase "having been brought up as a Methodist in a Roman Catholic community" is a noun phrase. More specifically, it's a gerund phrase. It is the object of "with", and only some kind of noun phrase can be the object of a preposition.

Let's put it after another preposition:

"He suffers from having been brought up as a Methodist in a Roman Catholic community."

You can replace that phrase with a pronoun:

"He suffers from it."
"He suffers from that."

Pronouns can generally only replace noun phrases.

Notice that you can also make put a possessive pronoun before it:

"The story is about his having been brought up as a Methodist in a Roman Catholic community."

Possessive pronouns can only be used for noun phrases, so this must be a noun phrase.

[Monica]

Yes, but in this example, we cannot replace the fragment between commas by "it":
With two white grandfathers, and it, Walcott is ideally placed to express the Caribbean’s confusions of cultural identity.
On the other hand, we can very easily transform it into a clause:
With two white grandfathers, and as he was brought up as a Methodist in a Roman Catholic community, Walcott is ideally placed to express the Caribbean’s confusions of cultural identity.
So I've got the feeling it's a clause, but I'm finding this incredibly confusing, especially as everybody I ask seems to have a different opinion regarding this question.

[Jamie (K)]

It's not a clause, because "having" has no subject.

You can replace the phrase with "that", if the fact has been mentioned before. All you have to do is change the punctuation:

"With two white grandfathers -- and that -- Walcott is ideally placed to express the Caribbean’s confusions of cultural identity."
"With two white grandfathers -- plus that -- Walcott is ideally placed to express the Caribbean’s confusions of cultural identity."

You can replace the phrase with a clause, but you are using the clause as the object of the preposition "as", which means it is acting in the place of a noun phrase, and you're pairing up two prepositional phrases. Sometimes clauses act in the place of a noun phrase.

Also, your argument that it could be a clause because it can be transformed into a clause is bogus. You can turn grass into fertilizer, but that doesn't mean that grass is fertilizer. You'd be better off saying it can be REPLACED by a clause. You can often replace a gerund with an infinitive...

-- He likes skiing.
-- He likes to ski.

...but that doesn't mean a gerund is an infinitive.

It CANNOT be a clause, because:

1. Clauses can't be the object of a possessive pronoun.
2. Clauses have to have subjects, and this phrase doesn't.
3. It is one of the objects of the preposition "with" and usually (though there can be exceptions) only like items can be bound by a conjunction. "Two white grandfathers" is a noun phrase, and so is the phrase on the other side of "and".

You're finding it incredibly confusing because you're not sufficiently familiar with the structure and function of gerund phrases (i.e., verb phrases that act as noun phrases). If everybody you ask tells you something different, then a lot of the people you ask are also confused and wrong about it.

It's definitely a gerund phrase, and therefore it is acting in the function of a noun phrase.

[Jamie (K)]

Monica, part of the confusion is the fact that "with two white grandfathers" and that gerund phrase are not constituents of the main sentence, but are acting as adverbial modifiers to the sentence as a whole.

[English_Leaner]

sometimes we can not remember every instances, but to use it more often, we will be able to tell the difference