A practical english grammar - Vyssaja skola 1978
VERB + GERUND with subject
Sound symbols
Often, in the pattern verb + gerund, the actor of the gerund is not the same as the actor of the characteristic verb. In other words, they have different subjects. We have already seen that when no subject for the gerund is expressed, the construction means that the same subject performs both acts. In these sentences each gerund has its own subject.
1) I resented his taking the best room for himself.
2) I don’t like him taking so much of my time.
3) Do you approve of that child staying up so late?
4) I don’t remember Charles’s telling me that.
You will observe that two of the sentences have possessive subjects, while the others have an objective pronoun and a plain noun. The formal rule, according to tradition, is that the subject of a gerund must be possessive. The tendency of English speakers to use an objective pronoun or a plain noun in front of a gerund is so strong, however, that the rule is often violated, even in formal style, and is ignored altogether by many speakers in informal style. It is usually followed more consistently in the case of pronouns than nouns. For instance, most educated English speakers would consider sentence (1) more “correct” than sentence (2), though they themselves might say things like sentence (2) on occasion. They would probably approve of the lack of possessive ending on child in sentence (3), and only the most careful speakers would ever use the ’s in sentence (4).