Selina Walker, publisher of Century and Arrow, attributed the recent rise of psychological thrillers to __________ being “a sort of ‘melding’ of the women’s relationship and detective genres”.
their or them?? Please provide the explanation as well.
edit : replaced "there" by "their"
It should be them.
Because it refers to the thrillers. The sentence further talks about the genres giving us a hint that 'a sort of 'melding'' is being a type of those thrillers.
It should be:
Selina Walker, publisher of Century and Arrow, attributed the recent rise of psychological thrillers to there being “a sort of ‘melding’ of the women’s relationship and detective genres”.
where there introduces some reasoning regarding the previous clause.
It depends on what you want the subject of the last part to be. If you're saying that in general there has been a sort of melding then the correct word would be "there". If you're saying that psychological thrillers are a sort of melding then you should use "them".
It truly depends on the meaning intended.
If what is intended is something like:
attirbuted the recent rise of psychological thrillers to the general rise in melding the traditional genres about women's emotional relationships and the detective story,
then there would be a vague way to convey the idea that psychological thrillers are one specific manifestation of a more general phenomenon.
If what is intended is something like:
attributed the rise of the psychological thriller to that genre's combining the appeals of stories about emotional relationships and stories about who-done-it,
then them would be a vague way to convey the idea that the genre of the psychological thriller appeals to two different but compatible interests.
The problem is that, at least out of context, the quoted language is very muddy. Having experience giving interviews, I am well aware that it can be difficult to give clear answers to hard questions on the spur of the moment. The person quoted may have had a clear thought and failed to express it well. Or she may have not had time to articulate a cogent answer to an unanticipated question.
Does the phase "a sort of 'melding' of the women’s relationship and detective genres" describe something that exists separately from the thrillers or does it describe something essential to the thrillers in question?
Selina Walker attributed the recent rise of psychological thrillers to there being a "melding" (i.e., the existence of a "melding" that's external to the psychological thrillers).
Selina Walker attributed the recent rise of psychological thrillers to their being a "melding" (i.e., the "melding" is a quality or aspect of the recent thrillers themselves).
see also this ELU question “of their being” vs “of there being”
As the subject of a gerund phrase, the possessive form is traditionally used in formal writing. The distinction is whether you're discussing the noun itself or a quality or aspect of that noun. This rule is often ignored in informal writing and conversations.
see also this ELL question When to use an object pronoun or a possessive adjective before a gerund
and getitwriteonline.com Using Possessives with Gerunds
