hi . are any of these sentences correct grammatically : 'my problem is you smoking' , 'my problem is your smoking' , 'my problem is him coming back home' , 'my problem is his coming back home'
the first two sentences used when talking about something done regularly or in the present time and the last ones for when talking about the future .
are any of them common ? written or spoken English . articles , book , newspapers , conversations .
thank you .
First; a disclaimer. I'm not big on grammar; I'm a life-student of the acquisition approach. In other words, I'm going to answer your question based on years of reading, listening, writing, and speaking. I was waiting to see if someone would give you a solid grammatical response. That doesn't look like it will happen, so...
I'm going to tell you that all your sentences are okay for common usage. As a native speaker, I completely understand your meaning in every case. If I was writing formally, however, I would certainly rephrase, for example, "I dislike it when you smoke in the house".
Lets look at the first two sentences. In both cases, your message is the same; the person you are speaking to smokes, and you are not happy about that fact. Each sentence delivers this message in a subtly different way, however. "...you smoking" is directed at his action of smoking. "...your smoking" is directed at his habit of smoking. The "act" versus the "habit".
Your second pair of sentences likewise deliver the same message, "you aren't happy about his return", but again the him/his creates a change in the specific focus of what you have a problem with. "...him coming back home" is referring to the return as an event. "Today it rained, there was a traffic jam on Main Street, and that guy returned to the city". Just one more event in a list of things that have happened.
'...his coming back home". "His", as you should know, denotes ownership. Now we are viewing this as a feature or attribute of that person. It evokes for me a sense that you assign blame to him for your discomfort.
To put this another way, if you said to me, "...him coming back home", I would infer that you are unhappy about the fact of his presence, while if you said to me, "...his coming back home", I would infer that you are unhappy about his decision to come back.
The differences between these sentences really are rather inconsequential. Both clearly state you are unhappy about something; the differences only become important if the exact reason why you are unhappy is important to your audience.