# EN: anyone's learning



## Samedi14

**I found this sentence in an article, and I'm puzzled by the " 's ":
"Where others find that people’s stories illustrate principles or morals or at least cultural generalizations, Ford does not allow the possibility of anyone*’s* learning anything."
Is it a typo or is there a grammatical rule that I'm missing here?


----------



## Suehil

It is correct.  'Learning' is a gerund, so works like a noun.  It works the same as 'anyone's book'.


----------



## Samedi14

But since it works like a noun, we shouldn't have "anything" afterwards...


----------



## Tim~!

It works fine, but is closer to book English than spoken English.

In spoken English we tend to hear "You didn't see me leaving."  Some people would argue, though, that _leaving _is a gerund (a noun form) and so requires a possessive adjective rather than a pronoun, since the former can relate to nouns whilst the latter can't:

"You didn't see my leaving."

I think it works nicest in the following example: 

"His being there made the party extra special."

Lots of people would say "Him being there" but it's hard to justify that gramatically.  Once you change the object pronoun _him_ to the possessive adjective _his_, it become gramatically sensible, since one can have a possessive adjective attached to a noun.


----------



## Tim~!

Samedi14 said:


> But since it works like a noun, we shouldn't have "anything" afterwards...



It's fine.  A gerund is a verbal noun, so the verb form "to learn something" can be rendered "one's learning something", _something_ changing to _anything_ in your example because of the negative sentence structure.


----------



## Samedi14

I have no problem at all with your examples, but the sentence I posted is still puzzling to me: Ford does not allow the possibility of anyone*’s* learning anything.

"Anything" is a pronoun here. So let's replace it by a noun and see if the sentence still works: 
"Ford does not allow the possibility of anyone*’s* learning French."
Would you still say the sentence is correct?


----------



## Samedi14

I think I'm beginning to understand. Thanks for you help.


----------



## Samedi14

I don't think so.


----------



## Tim~!

Samedi14 said:


> "Ford does not allow the possibility of anyone*’s* learning French."
> Would you still say the sentence is correct?



It's not a good example, because most people wouldn't use that particular sentence.  We'd be more likely to type "Whilst ... Ford doesn't grant anybody the opportunity to learn anything."

So, even if I analyse it and say the grammar breakdown is correct, it will seem unnatural, just because people wouldn't tend to use that style of sentence in that instance.


----------



## geostan

Tim~! said:


> "You didn't see my leaving."



This cannot be correct. The trick is to figure out why. One could substitute _leave_, and make _me_ clearly necessary. This makes me think that the reason has something to do with the first verb, a verb of perception.

The construction might be something like:

verb of perception + object (pro)noun + participle.

I'm sure there are other examples where the gerund does not work. But I'm not sure how the one or the other of these two constructions is triggered.

I'll have to give this some more thought.


----------



## djamal 2008

Learning is a verb and anything is COD and the two words combined are the possession of anybody, _learning anything_ is  complement du nom the_ anybody _just as _learning french_.


----------



## geostan

djamal 2008 said:


> Learning is a verb and anything is COD and the two words combined are the possession of anybody, _learning anything_ is  complement du nom the_ anybody _just as _learning french_.



What is your point?


----------



## Tim~!

geostan said:


> This cannot be correct. The trick is to figure out why. One could substitute _leave_, and make _me_ clearly necessary. This makes me think that the reason has something to do with the first verb, a verb of perception.



I think the reason that it sounds so odd is because there's an alternative noun that we could use: _departure_.  

A prosecutor might well ask though "And you say you witnessed his leaving the property?  With your own eyes?"  Possessive adjective + "leaving" is not so uncommon: 560 Google hits for "upon my leaving" attest to this.

Of course you could substitute "me leave".  There's nothing at all unusual in that.  It's the usual choice.  

That doesn't change the fact, though, that "my leaving" is perfectly permissible gramatically.  It just so happens that it's a staid form, lagging far behind "me leave" and "my departure" when we consider the regularity of its use.



> The construction might be something like:
> 
> verb of perception + object (pro)noun + participle.



I would naturally say "I saw him come" or "I saw him coming", where I would consider "coming" to be the present participle rather than a gerund.


----------



## geostan

Tim~! said:


> A prosecutor might well ask though "And you say you witnessed his leaving the property?  With your own eyes?"  Possessive adjective + "leaving" is not so uncommon: 560 Google hits for "upon my leaving" attest to this.



Yes, your examples sound fine, which is why I thought that the difference might lie in the introductory verb. To alter your first example, I would never say: _And you saw his leaving the property? _It is totally unidiomatic and assuredly incorrect.

Cheers!


----------



## Fred_C

geostan said:


> Yes, your examples sound fine, which is why I thought that the difference might lie in the introductory verb. To alter your first example, I would never say: _And you saw his leaving the property? _It is totally unidiomatic and assuredly incorrect.
> 
> Cheers!


Of course. 
The "leaving" in your example is not a gerund, it is a present participle acting as an adjective modifying "him".
Gerunds are nouns, but present participles are adjectives.


----------



## Dzienne

Samedi14 said:


> I found this sentence in an article, and I'm puzzled by the " 's ":
> "Where others find that people’s stories illustrate principles or morals or at least cultural generalizations, Ford does not allow the possibility of anyone*’s* learning anything."
> Is it a typo or is there a grammatical rule that I'm missing here?



It's possessive.  There are only two reasons for 's.  One is to contract.  The other is to show possession.  Which brings us to everyone's discussion about the phrase "learning anything".  It doesn't really matter what you put after learning.  You could put "French".  You could put "anything".  You could put a verb in the infinitive like "to cook".  

The phrase "learning anything" is acting like a noun because it is possessed by "anyone".  But you could just as easily drop the 's and learning is actually a verb and "anything" is a direct object.


----------



## the-quality-man-4

To make it easy,it's correct when I write it" ......enyone is learning....."


----------



## Suehil

the-quality-man-4 said:


> To make it easy,it's correct when I write it" ......enyone is learning....."


 
No, here the 's is possessive, not a contraction of 'is'.


----------



## the-quality-man-4

You see it easy when you want to,thank you a loooot Suehil.


----------



## Artigh

I'd say the easiest way for you, as a french, to understand this would be making the verb a noun in french,

learn = apprendre
learning = apprentissage.

the possibility of anyone's learning anything.

la possibilité d'apprentissage d'une chose par qq'n . (?)

quelque chose comme ça.


----------

