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"I couldn't persuade Tim in spite of my begging him to come with us" So, is it supposed to be "me begging him", or it is grammatical? My teaher said the sentence was correct. But when I asked my different internet frineds, who claimed to be American and Singaporean, they all agreed "me begging him" was correct.

So is it "me or "my"? If both are interchangeable, please explain to me when to use each individually in different contexts.

Anton
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user416390
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    They are interchangeable. The only difference is that genitive "my" is more formal than accusative "me". – BillJ Mar 04 '21 at 07:37
  • My understanding (not me understanding) is that Begging is a noun so deserves my rather than me. Read about possessive gerunds. Your question has been dealt with in previous questions and answers. See https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/2625/when-is-a-gerund-supposed-to-be-preceded-by-a-possessive-adjective-determiner – Anton Mar 04 '21 at 07:52
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    No: in the OP's example "begging" is a verb, whether the pronoun is genitive or accusative. – BillJ Mar 04 '21 at 08:06
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    @Anton No: it's a verb in both cases. "Beg" is a catenative verb, and the infinitival clause "to come with us" is its catenative complement. The intervening NP "him" is the syntactic object of "begging" and the understood subject of the subordinate clause. Note that nouns do not take direct objects. – BillJ Mar 04 '21 at 08:38

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I couldn't persuade Tim in spite of my/me begging him to come with us.

Both forms are correct and interchangeable.

"Begging" is a verb in both cases, as is evident by the the fact that it has the direct object "him".

The only difference is that genitive "my" is more formal than accusative "me".

BillJ
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    It could also be argued that begging is a noun because it is preceded by a possessive pronoun/determiner. I would be interested in reading a reputable source that supports the verb claim. – Shoe Mar 04 '21 at 08:24
  • I'd say that the presence of "him" as object of "begging" indicates that "begging" is a verb. Nouns do not take objects. CGEL discusses this in Ch 14. – BillJ Mar 04 '21 at 09:30
  • Thanks for the reference. That is a long complex chapter, and I couldn't find where H&P explicitly classify the "-ing" form as a verb in such constructions. Aarts in The Oxford Dictionary of English Grammar notes of the sentence "My smoking twenty cigarettes a day annoys them" that "smoking is noun-like in being preceded by the pronoun my... However, it is verb-like in taking a direct object, and in retaining verbal meaning." Since I am more interested in usage than in classification that is good enough for me. – Shoe Mar 05 '21 at 19:23
  • @Shoe I believe the salient facts are discussed in Ch14 1.5 pp 1187-1191. – BillJ Mar 06 '21 at 07:22
  • Many thanks. I'll check this out. – Shoe Mar 06 '21 at 07:31