Just shows what can happen if you fail to put a possessive before a jerand
Ironic that you hit upon my favorite part of speech, the gerund (sorry, correct spelling). The gerund acts as a verb, which functions as a noun and, thus, occupies places in a sentence or clause where other nouns would occupy. Without exception it always ends in ing. The only difficulty in spotting a gerund is another fun part of speech called the present participle.
Now what makes this sentence of David's so interesting is the fact that he refers to the possessive pronoun that should come before a gerund. This is what I was taught by my mother. So, rather than say, "She saw me playing tennis," it should be "She saw my playing tennis." This is due to the fact that playing is part noun and requires a possessive pronoun.
One day a mother in my practice who taught English and grammar in college corrected me and said it could be either. I was shocked, argued for just a few seconds given she seemed extremely adamant about this. I had correct at least over 1,000 people and, just like the television show, "They call me Earl," or something like that, I figured I needed to find these people and apologize. Upon my saying (notice the possessive pronoun and gerund, which is always correct no matter which you choose as your pronoun) to each of these people, "Remember the day you used a gerund in your sentence, and I corrected you, explaining that your non-possesive pronoun should have been a possessive pronoun give the following word was a gerund (half verb, half noun). This was working great since even though I apologized to them, they had no idea what I had apologized for and just went on with their daily routine shrugging it off as, "Well it's Bert afterall."
So, I went to my favorite
site for all things grammar and posted the question. Immediately, the teachers, librarians and lovers of grammar came out on the side of the mother in my practice. It seems that either me or my or him or his can be used. Of course, you can never go wrong with her. There was one poster who used a sentence relating to the Beverly Hillbillies, which drove the point home revealing where according to how you want your meaning to come across, one can use the non-possessive pronoun or the possessive pronoun.
