What is correct?

Question

"If you notice spelling errors I would appreciate you/your bringing it to my attention."
To me "you" version sounds better. I don't understand why is "your" sometimes used?
I'm sorry if these questions sound a bit stupid, but I'm still learning english.

Vigor

Usenet · Accepted Answer

Vigor wrote on 14 Dec 2004:
[nq:1]"If you notice spelling errors I would appreciate you/your bringing it to my attention." To me "you" version sounds better.[/nq]
Not to me, though.
[nq:1]I don't understand why is "your" sometimes used?[/nq]
Because only some people know that, in this structure, "your" is grammatically correct and proper for formal written English. Some of us prefer to speak the way we write rather than write the way we speak. It's a style choice. The funny thing about it, of course, is that when one goes one way long enough, the way one speaks and the way one writes begin to become indistinguishable. In such cases, poor speakers make poor writers. It's difficult for any kind of schizoid to consistently code-switch and get it right all the time. Good speakers don't necessarily make good writers, however.
The "you" version is probably more common among native anglophones in informal written English and in speech.
[nq:1]I'm sorry if these questions sound a bit stupid, but I'm still learning english.[/nq]
Such questions are never stupid unless you know the answers already or don't really care what answers you get.

Franke: EFL teacher & medical editor
For email, replace numbers with English alphabet.

Usenet · Answer

[nq:1]"If you notice spelling errors I would appreciate you/your bringing it to my attention." To me "you" version sounds better. I don't understand why is "your" sometimes used?[/nq]
We can use an object pronoun or a possessive before the -ing form of a verb. What we use depends on what is being talked about in the sentence: the person doing the action or the action itself.

In your quoted sentence, it is the action (bringing it to my attention) that would be appreciated. The possessive "your" should be used before the gerund "bringing".

Mary Ng

Usenet · Answer

[nq:1]"If you notice spelling errors I would appreciate you/your bringing it to my attention." To me "you" version sounds better. I don't understand why is "your" sometimes used?[/nq]
Fowler's /Modern English Usage/ second edition calls the "you" form a "fused participle" and condemns it heartily. According to Fowler (and to Sir Ernest Gowers, editor of the second edition), "your" is idiomatic.
If you say "appreciate you bringing", then logically it is "you" that is appreciated. But actually you appreciate the bringing, and therefore you need the possessive form "your" to modify it.

But even in his day Fowler admitted that "you" was common, and today it's probably much more common than "your". If your teacher is a prescriptivist, use "your"; but understand that even though it's historically correct it will sound worse than "you" to quite a lot of native speakers.
I would definitely say and write "appreciate your bringing". But I also say "he's older than I" where most people would say "than me". I'm sure to many people my speech sounds pedantic. You need to develop your own style, which involves making choices on matters like this.

Stan Brown, Oak Road Systems, Tompkins County, New York, USA http://oakroadsystems.com
"I do not believe in a personal *** and I have never denied this but have expressed it clearly. If something is in me which can be called religious then it is the unbounded admiration for the structure of the world so far as our science can reveal it."
Einstein, in /The Human Side/, ed H Dukas and B Hoffman

Usenet · Answer

[nq:2]"If you notice spelling errors I would appreciate you/your bringing ... sounds better. I don't understand why is "your" sometimes used?[/nq]
[nq:1]Fowler's /Modern English Usage/ second edition calls the "you" form a "fused participle" and condemns it heartily. According to Fowler ... people my speech sounds pedantic. You need to develop your own style, which involves making choices on matters like this.[/nq]
Do you ever answer with "Me too"?

"When my comfort was at stake, there was no trouble I would not go to." -, "Molloy"

Usenet · Answer

[nq:1]Because only some people know that, in this structure, "your" is grammatically correct and proper for formal written English. Some ... of schizoid to consistently code-switch and get it right all the time. Good speakers don't necessarily make good writers, however.[/nq]
What's wrong with code switching?

"When my comfort was at stake, there was no trouble I would not go to." -, "Molloy"

Usenet · Answer

[nq:2]Because only some people know that, in this structure, "your" ... the time. Good speakers don't necessarily make good writers, however.[/nq]
[nq:1]What's wrong with code switching?[/nq]
I said that it was "difficult to code-swith and get it right all the time". I didn't say that it was impossible or that there was anything wrong with it. We all code-switch (in one sense, if one is willing to accept that written and spoken English are two different languages: "code-switching" normally means using two different languages in the same conversation). Switching from register to register is not really "code-switching"(1), unless one accepts that the super-polite registers in Japanese, for example, are different languages from standard-polite and conversational-familiar, and because the vocabulary is to some extent quite different, they might be considered by some linguists as equivalent to two different dialects of the same language.

Here is a case where inference does not equal implication.
(1) In English, at least.

Franke: EFL teacher & medical editor
For email, replace numbers with English alphabet.

Usenet · Answer

In our last episode,
,
the lovely and talented Vigor
broadcast on alt.usage.english:
[nq:1]"If you notice spelling errors I would appreciate you/your bringing it to my attention." To me "you" version sounds better. I don't understand why is "your" sometimes used? I'm sorry if these questions sound a bit stupid, but I'm still learning english.[/nq]
It depends upon what is appreciated. If I appreciate you, I probably appreciate you whatever you are doing. If I appreciate the favor of having an error called to my attention, then it is bringing it to my attention that is the object of my apprecitation.
In other words, "your" is almost certainly what you mean in this situation.

Lars Eighner ~~finger for geek code~~ (Email Removed) http://www.io.com/~eighner/ The world may be full of fourth-rate writers but it's also full of fourth-rate readers. Stan Barstow

Usenet · Answer

[nq:2]"If you notice spelling errors I would appreciate you/your bringing ... sounds better. I don't understand why is "your" sometimes used?[/nq]
[nq:1]Fowler's /Modern English Usage/ second edition calls the "you" form a "fused participle" and condemns it heartily. According to Fowler ... understand that even though it's historically correct it will sound worse than "you" to quite a lot of native speakers.[/nq]
I gotta (gg) disagree with this last bit. The kind of people who would themselves say 'you bringing' are probably incapable of noticing that you have said 'your bringing.'
aok
\
Use your name (or almost anything else) @ treveneth.com for email. This will work unless you or somebody else who has done the same thing has put me on spammers' lists. Ain't redirection marvellous? (g)

Usenet · Answer

[nq:2]"If you notice spelling errors I would appreciate you/your bringing ... sounds better. I don't understand why is "your" sometimes used?[/nq]
[nq:1]We can use an object pronoun or a possessive before the -ing form of a verb. What we use depends ... action (bringing it to my attention) that would be appreciated. The possessive "your" should be used before the gerund "bringing".[/nq]
In AmE perhaps; in BrE it can sound too formal. (We've discussed this here a few times, I think.)

Ross Howard

Usenet · Answer

[nq:2]"If you notice spelling errors I would appreciate you/your bringing ... questions sound a bit stupid, but I'm still learning english.[/nq]
[nq:1]It depends upon what is appreciated. If I appreciate you, I probably appreciate you whatever you are doing. If I ... that is the object of my apprecitation. In other words, "your" is almost certainly what you mean in this situation.[/nq]
In this situation, perhaps. But, as I've just pointed out in a reply to Mary Ng, in BrE we prefer "you" + gerund except in the most formal circumstances. In other registers I'm not even sure that "your" would be idiomatic in the UK:
My boss is unhappy about my timekeeping
but
*? My boss had a go at me about my arriving late most mornings.
I'd stick it in the same box as "whom" and the subjunctive after "suggest", etc. quite normal in AmE but limited to only the most formal contexts in BrE.

Ross Howard

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