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Your age should not act as a preclusion to you being accepted on the university course Shouldn't it have been 'your', not 'you'?

Abbie1948 · Accepted Answer

No;"you being accepted "  is correct.

Maverick88 · Answer

'your' would be incorrect? Why?

Isn't it like 'Despite of my being thirsty I went on working'?

Abbie1948 · Answer

Aah, Maverick - a true student! Well done.

'your' is a determiner, and indicates something belonging or relating to the person or group of people being spoken or written to:

e.g. your age
your pen
your book
it's not your fault etc.

you is a pronoun, used to refer to the person or people being spoken or written to:
you are a good student.

In the sentence you quote, the noun 'age' relates to you, and is therefore referred to as "your age". "You" are the person being spoken about, so "..... should not act as a preclusion to you being accepted ....

Another way of saying this would be "we will not preclude you because of your age."

'Despite of my being thirsty I went on working'.
I'm afraid that 'my' is also a determiner. You cannot use a determiner like a pronoun. Let's think about this.

'Being' is the present participle of the verb 'to be'. If you were speaking in the present tense, you would say "I am thirsty", not "My am thirsty". It is the same in every aspect of the verb. In this particular example, it would be better to say:

"Despite being thirsty, I went on working."

'Despite' is a preposition which means "without taking any notice of or being influenced by; not prevented by", so you don't need to say 'despite of'. But you can say "In spite of..."

e.g. "In spite of the fact that I was thirsty, I went on working" or "In spite of my thirst, I went on working."

Does that help, or have I made it more complicated?

MrPedantic · Answer

Hello Abbie and Mav

I hope you don't mind if I add something here.

1. 'Your age should not act as a preclusion to your being accepted on the university course.'
2. 'Your age should not act as a preclusion to you being accepted on the university course.'

In #1, 'being accepted' is a verbal noun, and so can take a possessive determiner. However, this construction now has a slightly old-fashioned air to most native speakers, as people tend to precede the ING-form with an object pronoun, as in #2.

You could analyse the two sentences as follows:

#1 'your age' doesn't preclude 'your being accepted'.
#2 'your age' doesn't preclude 'you-being-accepted'.

(Thus in #2, 'age' is precluding a state; whereas in #1 it's precluding an event.)

MrP

Maverick88 · Answer

Hello CJ

In #1 it can preclude a process also right?
So you accept 'Despite my being thirsty I went on working'?

MrPedantic · Answer

Hello Mav

1. 'Despite my being thirsty, I went on working.'
2. 'Despite being thirsty, I went on working.'

In #1 'being' is a verbal noun (a gerund, or ING form), and so can follow the preposition 'despite' and take a modifier ('my').

Again, it's not a structure you find very often these days; most people would use #2.

MrP

CalifJim · Answer

maverick88,

I accept "Despite my being thirsty I went on working", yes. Leaving out the "my" is of course possible and perhaps even preferable because of the "I" which appears quite soon after.

Let's change the sentence so that the conjunction of "me" and "I" is not at issue.

I accept "Despite my being thirsty, they refused to give me water".

There has always been controversy surrounding the issue of "object pronoun or possessive pronoun" before a gerund. It hasn't gone away yet! Personally, I am often indifferent to the choice, and yet I must admit that one or the other form sounds distinctly better in specific cases.

For example, I find it more difficult to accept "Despite me being thirsty they refused to give me water" than to accept "My father hates me driving at night".

Maybe there is a reason why native speakers prefer one or the other in certain circumstances. (Could it be that "being" doesn't comfortably take "me", "us", etc.?) Maybe there are articles somewhere in cyberspace which shed light on the phenomenon. I've never looked, but it might be worth your while to do some research on it. Let us know if you find any websites on the topic that you would recommend.

CJ

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