According to Cobuild (Collins) (Chapter 1:7), the verb + -ing form catenation has three structures (not confusing the non-catenative strings such as Under the trees Bill strolled, looking at the flower beds):
[examples partly adapted]
[1] Verbs in phase (ie a two-verb structure where essentially one two-part concept is expressed):
The sea came rushing in.
He started / kept / stopped crying.
She avoided looking at him.
I won't bother going.
Have you tried asking?
I'm going shopping.
(These mostly invite echo questions such as 'What did he start doing?' 'What won't you bother doing?' With the 'going fishing' type, the echo question would be 'You're going ...?)
[2] Verb with object (ie with what is often termed a gerund)
I like being alone.
Have you considered applying?
She recommended staying.
He didn't remember leaving.
This involves stripping down the engine.
(These mostly invite echo questions such as 'What have you considered?' 'What does this involve?')
[3] Verb with adjunct ( depictive or resultative)
The soldiers died fighting.
Their boat finished up pointing the wrong way.
(These mostly invite echo questions such as 'How did the soldiers die?' (ie What was the manner of their death) 'How did the boat end up?')
I'd argue that these usages are [1] verbal, [2] verbal-nounal, and [3] adverbial or adjectival.
Those are three different problems.
- "He had me do this” vs “He had my doing this”
The former is correct. The latter is nonsensical.
- He said me being here was wonderful.
Yes, logically, it should be my, but no one ever says it like that. It's always me in this case. Go figure.
- She had made public an account of being groped by Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the man whom many thought would be the Socialist candidate.
You're quite correct here. It should be who, since this is the nominative case. Some people who don't bother much about cases, though, reckon that "whom" sounds more sophisticated. That's the only explanation I can think of, and should anyone have a better one, I defy them to prove it.
ADDENDUM (UPON POPULAR DEMAND):
FumbleFingers' example, but the teacher obviously had my cheating in mind has nothing at all to do with any of this. My terminology is sketchy, but ...
My teacher wouldn't have me cheating at the exam means he'd kick my ass if he caught me in the act of cheating.
My teacher had a problem with my cheating means he knew I was a cheat in general and had a problem with it.
He had me do this means his purpose (which he achieved) was to coax, force, or trick me (not force my, which would be nonsensical) into doing "this."
MORE ON THIS (from the OP's puzzled comment):
If the teacher had my cheating on the exam, she'd fail me. This works, right?
No, it doesn't.
One: To have someone [the accusative case] do something means to encourage, require, order, or force them to do it. It wouldn't make sense for the teacher to ask you to cheat and then fail you. I mean, shit happens; but generally teachers fail students because said students do something the teacher didn't ask them to do.
Two: "She had my cheating" doesn't make any sense unless it's the title of a book. As in "The teacher had My Teaching, by Umberto Eco, in her hands."
If he had my doing the work: This is wrong, and (attention! important information!) it is NOT related in any way to phrases like "Me being there brightened up the morons' lives." Nothing at all. Different rules, completely.
You can have me, or Linda, or John, do all the work for you.
You cannot, I emphasize, cannot, have my, Linda's, or John's, do all the work for you. You can't have Linda's do all the work for you. You can only have Linda do all the work for you.
Please tell me if you still have a problem understanding this. We'll post a whole new question together and have another spirited crack at the son of a bitch.
Best Answer
Is “I dislike to go there” a wrong sentence?
ᴛʟᴅʀ: Like like, historically dislike took a ᴛᴏ-infinitive not an -ɪɴɢ verb, but over the last century common usage has swapped those two preferences and now the ᴛᴏ-infinitive sounds distinctly odd to the modern ear. At the same time, dislike has also been replaced by don’t like, so even dislike seems old.
Your question is more interesting than those who have so far answered or commented upon it seem to credit. That’s because this is one of those many areas where English has changed notably within a comparatively short time.
Specifically, the dominant sort of (non-finite) clause complement following dislike before the Twentieth Century was of the same sort as the one following like: both habitually took a verb in the ᴛᴏ-infinitive not in its -ɪɴɢ form.
Although if one tries hard enough, one can find a few dislike ᴠᴇʀʙing examples from before the American Civil War, these are scarce in comparison with how easy it is to find cases of dislike + ᴛᴏ-infinitive.
The Plot Thickens
Here’s a plot of dislike to have against dislike having:
And here a plot dislike to be against dislike being:
Older Examples
Here are some older examples from back when it was common:
As you see, dislike to isn’t the only thing that reads a bid odd in those Nineteenth Century examples.
Newer Examples
Here are a couple from only a century ago, by which time it was already rare:
In contrast, the examples from the past fifty years of dislike + ᴛᴏ-infinitive are quite uncommon. Most that I could come up with have mitigating factors such as parallelism or established idioms which may have overridden the current instinct to use an -ɪɴɢ complement.
So how come anybody ever still uses this?
I suspect that the recent examples using the infinitive owe their existence to such factors as:
For example, this rewrite breaks the parallelism between like and dislike:
This rewrite becomes clumsy with two -ɪɴɢ forms fighting with each other:
Which would be better written dislike hearing men boast.
Here again the twinned -ɪɴɢ verbs seem awkward in a putative rewrite:
The combined to X and Y verbs may not fare so well upon rewrite. For example, consider:
The rewrite may not even be grammatical:
These would likely be better:
If you wouldn’t even like to try and make yourself a sandcastle, you haven’t lived yet.
If you truly don’t even like trying to make yourself a sandcastle, you haven’t lived yet.
Disliking dislike
Which brings us around to one more factor in play here. Usage of the verb dislike has seriously declined in just the past few decades:
That means that you will naturally find fewer instances of dislike since it is being replaced by don’t like.
But wait! What’s the answer to my question?
The broad but not especially useful answer to your question is that one cannot say that your original sentence is categorically wrong, given that it was once common:
However, people who don’t read much might erroneously think it wrong, since its form is one virtually unseen in this millennium save under extenuating literary circumstances, ones you would never expect to encounter scattered amongst the post-literate Post-It™ notes of today’s Internet chatter.
So while it is not “technically” wrong, given that your sentence uses a grammatical construction so rarely seen in present day writing, you would therefore do well to avoid the verb’s ᴛᴏ-infinitive here in favor of its -ɪɴɢ form:
But even that seems rather stiff and formal for casual use. In normal conversation you would simply say either of these:
There is no notable difference in meaning between three and four. Three is more common than four, but this trend is falling: