While writing a sentence the other day, it struck me that the following phrase has an odd feel to it that I cannot explain:
- Everyone will benefit by your being well cared for.
I kept wanting to use you're but I knew that wasn't right yet somehow the word your in this context feels sort-of possessive (as it should) and at the same time sort of verb-like. I can't explain it any better than that and maybe someone with better grammar chops than I have can help me understand how it fits grammatically in this context.
Another way looking at this might be:
"Why does this usage of your seem to create a grammatical dissonance?"
Best Answer
The subordinate clause
is the object of the preposition by.
That makes it a noun clause, i.e, a clause that acts as a noun.
Here's an elaboration of what I said about noun clauses in this answer:
Other names for the infinitive complementizer include "for-to complementizer",
because it has two parts:
For her to win was not unexpected. ~~~ *Her to win was not unexpected.
Everybody knows the to part; omission of to in infinitives like do in let me do it is unusual.
But the subject is more often deleted than present in infinitive clauses, and even when it is present, it is often seen without for. That's infinitives.
The other untensed type is the gerund clause, and once again there are two parts to the complementizer, one marking the subject and one the verb phrase.
Either
POSS
(Bill's, my, your, the old man's, etc.)Or
ACC
(Bill, me, you, the old man, etc.)marks the subject of a gerund, if present. I.e, you get your choice how to mark the subject --
your being well cared for and you being well cared for are both grammatical.
The first verb in a gerund verb phrase must have the -ing verb form.
The technical names are the "
POSS
-ing complementizer" and "theACC
-ing complementizer".So, to answer the questions, the grammatical role of your is Subject of the gerund clause.
I would guess the dissonance comes from the fact that
is a grammatical and homophonous assertive main clause that is, however, tensed. So its subject can't be deleted and can't be possessive or accusative. Whereas
is not tensed, not a main clause, and is presupposed instead of asserted, so its subject can be anything except a nominative pronoun (I, we, he, she, they). That's enough to confuse anybody.