Question

[carnageincminor]

I'm in the middle of beta-reading someone's work and I've come across this:

"He won't let it show but I know that you leaving is eating him alive."

My question concerns the you leaving part. I know the current construction is very common in dialogue but I'm not sure as to how grammatically correct it is by more formal standards (and the speaker

Comments

[saveyoursanity]

In a formal sense I'd probably use "your leaving".

Constructs

[hazelchaz]

"you leaving" is valid, because what's eating him is the action -- "you leaving."

"your leaving" is also valid, because what's eating him is the leaving. It happens to be your leaving, but it could be anybody's leaving.

"not having you around" is eating him alive.
"you being absent" is eating him alive.
"your absence" is eating him alive.

All valid, I say.

Re: Constructs

[carnageincminor]

I agree with you that they're valid. I'm still wondering whether the "you leaving" form was maybe accepted as proper usage later on, in the same way we now accept ending a sentence with a preposition, while the "your leaving" form was more traditionally correct.

Re: Constructs

[lazerbug]

Probably. "Leaving" is a gerund, so "you leaving" (pronoun-gerund/noun) doesn't make sense in that light; "your leaving" (adjective-gerund/noun) does. But if you think of "leaving" as a present-participle verb, then "you" can work there. So it's probably a shift in the way we think about that pattern and whether we consider the -ing word a gerund or a verb.

[rubicat]

I would tend toward "your leaving" as well.

A comma should also come before "but," right?

[graycie23]

this is the seventh grade comma lesson we all learned, I know, but I'm chiming in to mention that I find myself leaving it out in short sentences when I want to convey the thought as one coherent piece instead of the compound sentence it really is.

[rubicat]

I was curious about that. I'm always interested in how people approach commas. :)

[threnodyeris]

Commas, eh? I tend to approach them from the left and make a few reassuring sounds, so as not to startle them.

[pfy]

"Your leaving" is correct, but the "you leaving" construction is very common (and arguably correct) too, especially in informal contexts. So I suppose the question is: which construction would the character use?

[kairon13]

'Your leaving' is correct. 'You leaving' makes 'you' the subject.

[the_maenad]

No it doesn't.

[kairon13]

To quote from the Wikipedia article referenced by the OP:
* The teacher's shouting startled the student. (Shouting is a gerund, and teacher's is a possessive pronoun. The shouting is the subject of the sentence.)
* The teacher shouting startled the student. (Shouting is a participle describing the teacher. This sentence means The teacher who was shouting startled the student. In this sentence, the subject is the teacher herself.)