Two Quick Questions

[cleung]

1. Can you please tell me whether I should I use "us" or "our" below? The student insisted on us (our) trying to give him a better dorm room.

2. With or From, please? I have just ordered the product with (from) him.

[Hanabi]

I'm not quite sure I understand the first sentence completely, thus anything I say may be wrong. However "our" works if you mean that the student wants a better dorm, and he's encouraging you (plural) to keep trying to get him one. Like I said, I'm not sure I fully understand the sentence.

With the second one, it depends. If you two were together ordering, then it's with. If he is offering the product, and you order it from his service, then it's from.

[cleung]

Dear Hanabi,

Thanks for your help. You understood my 1st question correctly, so you did provide me with an answer.

In my second question, "him" refers to the sales manager or sales representative of the company or supplier. Therefore, I should have said, instead:

I have just ordered the product with (or from) the company.

Should I use with or from? Thanks a lot.

[zahari]

hi there!!!

For the 1st sentence:
I know that the subject of a gerund form can be either in the genitive or the accusative.So, to me, both are correct.The genitive, however, is commoner. I don't know for sure if there's a clear distinction between the two and which one you should choose if "our" and "us" appeared as possible answers/distractors in the same sentence.

For the 2nd sentence:
The context would be helpful here but, generally "from" looks more appropriate: order sth from sb/somewhere.e.g. order sth from the Net.
If the speaker wanted to say that s/he was with sb else when s/he ordered the product, s/he would simply say: We ordered the product.

Hope I've been of some help>>>

[MrPedantic]

1. The student insisted on us trying to give him a better room.
2. The student insisted on our trying to give him a better room.

Some people believe that #1 is grammatically incorrect, on the grounds that although the underlined phrase looks as if it post-modifies "us", this can't be the case, because "the student insisted on us" doesn't make sense on its own.

Other people believe that although #2 is grammatically correct, it sounds a little stilted in everyday usage.

For my part, I think there's a slight difference between the two versions, which I would try to quantify as follows:

a) #1 focuses on the agent (here, "us") in combination with the action (here, "trying, etc".).

b) #2 focuses only on the action.

Cf.

3. I watched him playing football.

Here too, we focus on agent + action: "him-playing-football".

(Those who object to #1 would say that the difference between #1 and #3 is that "playing football" genuinely post-modifies "him" as an object complement: we can say "I watched him".)

MrP