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Are both of the above phrases correct or only the latter?

For example, if saying, 'Your understanding (of) my sense of humour was the only thing that made the dinner enjoyable'. Is the 'of' necessary?

Similarly: 'Your support of the project was invaluable'. vs 'Your supporting (of) the project was invaluable'.

I know, in this case, use of the gerund 'supporting' would be unlikely since it sounds clumsy in comparison to 'support', but for the sake of argument I was curious whether it sounded correct to use the 'of' in the gerund phrase - to me 'Your supporting the project was invaluable' sounds more natural than 'Your supporting of the project...' but I find this difficult to reconcile with the necessary use of 'of' when using 'support' (you obviously can't say 'Your support the project was invaluable.').

I suppose, 'Your supporting the project was invaluable' could be justified grammatically since 'supporting the project' is a gerund phrase. Referring back to the first part of the question, 'Your understanding my sense humour was...' would also be correct since 'understanding my sense of humour' is again a perfectly good gerund phrase - but here, the inclusion of 'of' sounds more natural.

Curious what others would tend to use/regard as correct in these sentences (or for similar phrases)

Nic
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    Once you use of, it is no longer a gerund, only a deverbal noun. Gerunds are verbs so can take objects. Nouns are not verbs and so cannot take objects. They can, however, take prepositions, unlike verbs. And the logical subject of a gerund phrase can be either in the object case or in the possessive case. Most oral uses are not in the possessive. – tchrist Dec 27 '17 at 03:24
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    Please see this answer. I believe it answers your question. If you agree, please let me know and I'll mark this as a duplicate of that. – tchrist Dec 27 '17 at 03:30
  • Yes I think that addresses my confusion, thanks for the help! – Nic Dec 29 '17 at 08:11

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