entailed him / his being - use of pronoun vs possessive determiner

Question

The position entailed him/his being in Chicago most of the time.
The bonuses were based on him/his reaching the quota.
It had nothing to do with him/his being privy to the information.
His fondness for sports resulted in him/his assuming that position.

In the above sentences which one is grammatically correct, him or his, and why?

In almost all cases, both the ACC-ing him and the POSS-ing his are correct for gerund complement clauses. It's a "speaker's choice" situation; there is no meaning difference. — John Lawler, Sep 20 '14 at 23:51
This question has been raised several times on ELU, here for instance, as well as the question John Lawler links. — StoneyB on hiatus, Sep 20 '14 at 23:58

score 1 · Answer 1 · answered Sep 21 '14 at 00:18

Both forms of each sentence are both grammatical and in common use. Verbs ending in -ing are generally present participle tense, and you can use either the possessive form or the subject form of the pronoun.

If you changed the verb to the infinitive (to verb) tense, you would need to treat the pronoun as the corresponding subject to that verb. This is easy in the first case: The position entailed him to be in Chicago most of the time. It's more difficult in the second sentence: The bonuses required him to reach the quota. It's impractical to so with the third and fourth sentences.

In addition, I would recommend avoiding the phrase "assume/assuming the/that position" where possible, as many associate that wording with corporal punishment.

Right. The predicates in sentences 3 and 4 can take gerund, but can't take infinitive complements, while the predicates in sentences 1 and 2 can take either gerund or infinitive complements. — John Lawler, Sep 21 '14 at 03:01

entailed him / his being - use of pronoun vs possessive determiner

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