Not knowing, please help me to explain why?

English as a Second Language English Vocabulary, Grammar and Idioms
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  1. Not knowing/ having not known where the theater was, she asked for direcction at the hotel reception.

  2. That color doesn’t really suit you, if you don’t mind saying/ my saying so.

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Since she didn’t know where the theater was she asked for directions at the hotel reception.

That color doesn’t really suit you, if you don’t mind my saying so.

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You can also make it directly personal like this -

If you don’t mind me saying so.

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Many thanks for your help but I really want to know grammar structure about " not knowing/ having not known" Please help me to clarify it.

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‘Not knowing’ as a present particle is fine here as the subject ‘she’ follows on. The negative past participle needs to be . - Not having known. Both are acceptable in your sentence.

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I agree with Alan. It should be Not having known (negative perfective participle) with the negator coming first.

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“Not having known” might be grammatically correct but to me it sounds rather contrived and complicated.

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Torsten, Not having known is akin to Not knowing wherein you find the negative occupy the front position, which cannot be written as Knowing not.

The modern trend is to shift the negator (especially after the infinitive marker) as in: “He decided to not answer the question” instead of “He decided not to answer the question”. Which may be based on the theory of split infinitive!

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Hi Lawrence, what I mean is that using a clause like ‘Since she didn’t know’ or ‘As she hadn’t known’ is easier to understand that ‘Not having known’.

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I agree. But to save space and time, and to avoid repetition, we use participial phrases when the subjects in the otherwise two clauses are one and the same.

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Mnay thanks for your all kindness, but actually with my ability, I couln’t get the point which one is better, poor me.

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