I was reading a book and encountered this sentence (emphasis added by me):
- I know it without his telling me.
Despite being grammatically correct, it seemed a little strange to me. What came to my mind was this sentence instead:
- I know it without him telling me.
Another case was this:
- I can’t control the fact of temptation, but there’s no chance of my giving in to it.
QUESTION: Is using "me" here in #3 (or "him" as done in the previous one) correct? If so, what's the difference between the two?
The OP clarified that he/she wanted to know the semantic difference between these two phrases. I will maintain that, for the general reader, both sentences are generally considered acceptable, and the semantics are identical for practically all purposes. There are some subtle variations in style or meaning in which one form might be better than another.
My position is supported by an absolutely outstanding work, with an unassuming name, General properties of Gerunds, Participles and Verbal Nouns (PDF). Based on this work, the phrase "his telling me" seems to be more traditionally (perhaps prescriptively) correct. Also, "him telling me" has more of a feel of an independent clause (aka IP), "subject verb object", while "his telling me" is more like a dependent clause (aka DP). The author also indicates there is ambiguity in how to parse these. Don't hesitate to search the General properties of Gerunds, Participles and Verbal Nouns for semantics to find additional relevant information.
I want to highlight this work (and the author) and encourage an interested linguistics reader to investigate further. It's a very interesting (advanced yet sometimes very readable) exposition on many facets of this complex issue, including this exact issue of semantics. The above chapter seems to contain (directly or indirectly via reference) the best research on the theory to this question through the publication date.
For reference, the above text is part of a book (also with an unassuming name), Complementation in English: A Minimalist Approach (Cornilescu 2003, Google Ref) I must say Alexandra Cornilescu has many outstanding and intriguing papers/books that I'll be reading. Here's the Wikipedia Page (translated) about him.
General searches to find these works, see:
Google Search: Complementation in English a Minimalist ApproachGoogle Search: General properties of Gerunds, Participles and Verbal NounsI haven't the time to dig further into this at this point. Anyone else is free to use the source I've provided to create/enhance their own answer.
The following is my entire answer before the above note was created, and I still stand by it's value.
For the grammar involved, this question has a very good answer in https://english.stackexchange.com/a/2628/61171 (Credit @CopperKettle for reference.) I'll attempt to convey my native AmEng intuition with examples so we can avoid some of the heavier grammar lingo.
Second, let's simplify by giving him a name, "John". Now we can talk about John directly. This is simply a teaching aid.
In isolation, there's no significant semantic difference between the two sentences. They are saying exactly the same thing in slightly different ways.
But in some contexts, the differences could have some differing semantic pull. The issue of semantic differences might be rephrased: If you polled 100 people, what meanings would be interpreted, and what would be the percentage of each meaning?
Let's review some basic grammar.
he and him are pronouns that can be replaced with "John".
his is a possessive pronoun and can be replaced with John's:
Now consider some gerunds in which their function is more clear than the OP's sentences:
Note in the last example, "His dancing" is the subject of the sentence and functions like a noun.
For the first sentence, his is a possessive pronoun, and "his telling me" functions as a noun. The following sentences all have a similar feel to them (relative to the "him" sentence):
Here's a tree showing a traditional grammar layout of the sentence:1
Here's a more modern syntax tree:2
In the second sentence, the word "him" is the same as "John". Note the following:
Now consider the following:
"John dancing" has an active meaning. John is hypothetically doing something. Here's a modern syntax tree:3
This section demonstrates how to easily create the images contained within this answer. As such, this section is only ancillary technical information and is separate from the answer proper.
Below, I show how to generate Labeled Bracket Notation and how to render that notation into an image of a tree.
For the modern grammar syntax trees, I went to the the Stanford Parser and entered the first sentence. I substituted [ for ( and ] for ) and plugged that into http://yohasebe.com/rsyntaxtree. That gave a pretty picture. I usually resize these in something like pixlr to make them smaller. These trees use artificial intelligence natural language processing (NLP), and as such, may give less-than-ideal or incorrect results.
The first sentence I changed to typify a traditional grammar.
[S_Traditional-Grammar
[Subject I]
[Predicate
[Verb-"know"
[Object it]
[PP
[PRP without]
[NP
[N-POS his]
[NP
[GER-PH^ telling me]
]
]
]
]
]
]
The Stanford Parser results for the modern syntax tree didn't express what I wanted, so I modified it slightly.
[S
[NP [PRP I]]
[VP [VBP know]
[NP [PRP it]]
[PP [IN without]
[NP his telling me]
]
]
]
For the second sentence, I liked the Stanford Parser result. It's still slightly simplified.
[ROOT
[S
[NP [PRP I]]
[VP [VBP know]
[NP [PRP it]]
[PP [IN without]
[S
[NP [PRP him]]
[VP [VBG telling]
[NP [PRP me]]]]]]
]]
- I know it without his telling me.
- I know it without him telling me.
Another case was this:
- I can’t control the fact of temptation, but there’s no chance of my giving in to it.
QUESTION: Is using "me" here in #3 (or "him" as done in the previous one) correct? If so, what's the difference between the two?
Let me provide some info as related to your question about versions #1 and #2.
It seems that version #1 ("his"), which uses a genitive subject for the -ing clause, might not be completely acceptable, and perhaps even, it might be considered to be non-standard.
It seems that version #2 ("him"), which uses an accusative subject for the -ing clause, is unquestionably acceptable in today's standard English.
Here's some related info from CGEL, page 461:
(f) Subject of clausal complement of with/without
Pronouns in this position normally appear in accusative case:
[16.i ] We set off again, the Rover going precariously slowly in very low gear up hills, with me staying on its tail in case it petered out altogether.
[16.ii ] With me out of the way, there would be no one to curb his excesses.
Note that this is one place where a gerund-participial in complement function cannot take a genitive subject, but unlike the construction dealt with in (b) above the accusative is not here an informal alternant to a nominative. (fn 61)
and,
footnote 61: Nominatives are occasionally attested (e.g. * If I kept it secret, I could not use it without he in time asking awkward questions as to where I had obtained all the money), but they are rare enough to be set aside as errors.
Note that CGEL is the 2002 reference grammar by Huddleston and Pullum et al., The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language.
