A fused participle in the comics

[Dustin, December 3, 2021. Click for a larger view.]

Should it be “you hitting on me,” or “your hitting on me”? Dustin’s hitting on this woman may not be okay, but her fused participle is. From Garner’s Modern English Usage:

H.W. Fowler gave the name “fused participle” to a participle that is (1) used as a noun (i.e., a gerund), and (2) preceded by a noun or pronoun not in the possessive case — thus Me going home made her sad rather than the preferred My going home made her sad.

Fowler declared the fused participle always wrong. Bryan Garner is more judicious:

A modern rule might be formulated thus: when the ‑ing (present) participle has the force of a noun, it preferably takes a possessive subject, especially in formal contexts. But when the ‑ing participle has the force of a verb, a nonpossessive subject is acceptable, especially in informal contexts. When the participle falls in the predicate — as it usually does when case selection is a subtle question — another key is to analyze what the proper direct object should be. Consider this exchange: Is John in the shower? / Yes, I heard him singing. / Is he talented? / Yes, I heard his singing. The object of the first reply may be John himself (him), but the object of the second is clearly John’s (hence, his) singing.

Here, hitting has the force of a verb. And this brief conversation is nothing if not informal. You hitting is fine here. But for extra-grammatical reasons, it’s not, as Dustin is about to find out. Notice in the second sentence of this post: “Dustin’s hitting on this woman”: there hitting has the force of a noun.

In other comics news today, Zippy is Sluggo.