Maybe Gillian or somebody else can give me some advice on this. I don't have a good grammar book that explains this.

"I remember you telling me..."

"I remember your telling me..."

The first is definitely more common. I'm wondering if there is a "correct" answer in this case.

Incidentally,

"I remember Bill telling me..."

sounds more normal than:

"I remember Bill's telling me..."

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As above, so below

I'll go with door #1, "I remember you telling me . . ."

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Don of Borg - Cool, Calm, Collective.

"Within the next generation I believe that the world's leaders will discover that infant conditioning and narco-hypnosis are more efficient, as instruments of government, than clubs and prisons, and that the lust for power can be just as completely satisfied by suggesting people into loving their servitude as by flogging them and kicking them into obedience." -- Aldous Huxley

Me too. I think "your" in this case makes it sound like "telling" is a noun making it sound more like "I remember your dog". Could be wrong though.

Judges?

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A Nerd can figure out how long it will take the original Enterprise traveling at warp 6.5 to travel from Regulus to Antares.
A Geek will think he can use that to pick up a girl in a bar.
A Dork knows he can't pick up the girl with it, but will hang around for hours anyway, just in case she asks.
She might. You never know.

How about "I remember you told me . . ."?.

(That oughta get her attention).

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Don of Borg - Cool, Calm, Collective.

"Within the next generation I believe that the world's leaders will discover that infant conditioning and narco-hypnosis are more efficient, as instruments of government, than clubs and prisons, and that the lust for power can be just as completely satisfied by suggesting people into loving their servitude as by flogging them and kicking them into obedience." -- Aldous Huxley

How formal do you intend your writing to be?

Wikipedia: Gerund

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"I remember you telling me..."
In this case, the thing remembered is the thing told and that "you" did it.

"I remember your telling me..."
In this case, the thing remembered is the experience of being told by you.

At least, that's how I understand it. All regular disclaimers apply. Content may settle after filling.

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An emperor without enemies, a king without a kingdom, supported in life by the willing tribute of a free people.

Isn't that last one just plain wrong? I can't see why an apostrophe etc should be in there.

I think only the 1st option is correct in either case.

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N6MAA10816
'Forensic anthropologist! That's why no gun'
Are you a Bright?

Okay, well "your" and the apostrophe 's' both indicate possession. As pointed out, "telling me" is not a noun and cannot be possessed. You could say, "I remember your story about..." or "I remember Bill's story about..." but if you are wording it the way you have it in the OP, go with "I remember you telling me...".

I'll have to disagree with Henrik; the "I remember you telling..." wording is remembering the experience of being told whatever by whoever. It's remembering the whole thing; the telling and what was told. "you telling me" would be used for both situations.

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I'm like one of those idiot savants...well, except for the savant part.

"A long time ago, yet somehow in the future"

"I remember you telling me...." I guess could be made correct with something like:

I remember, you were telling me....

but in my HS English class, the other form was the "officially approved by the teacher" form:

I remember your telling me...
I remember Bill's telling me...

Todd

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Todd (Bowie, MD, US, North America, Earth, Sol System, Vega region, Local Bubble, Orion arm, Milky Way Galaxy, Local Group, Virgo A Cluster, Virgo supercluster, the universe in which spock is clean shaven)

Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum sonatur.

personal page: http://blog.astrosketches.info

"Telling" is indeed a noun - at least, it can be used as a noun. It's a gerund.

"The story gets better in the telling - in his telling, anyway."

Perfectly valid English.

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SeanF

"Ask to understand, but don't challenge unless you have the knowledge."--NEOWatcher

The contents of this post are ©2008 by SeanF and may not be copied or retransmitted in any form without the express written consent of SeanF

She was asleep! Isn't she allowed to sleep?

Okay. Here's how it works out.

"I remember your telling me" is correct.

"I remember you telling me" sounds better, even to me.

"I remember that you told me" is how I generally recast the sentence to avoid dealing with the issue.

And quite right, Sean: "telling" is a gerund and therefore a noun.

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Gillian

"Now everyone was giving her that kind of look UFOlogists get when they suddenly say, 'Hey, if you shade your eyes you can see it is just a flock of geese after all.'"

"You can't erase icing."

"I can't believe it doesn't work! I found it on the internet, man!"

Just to nitpik for the sake of probably making myself even more wrong; wouldn't telling only be a gerund if used in a certian way? Like, "Mark Twain was famous for the telling of the story of Huck Finn", and not "I heard your telling me to go to the store"? Maybe the second case is right also, but it just sounds sooo awkward and wrong. Sounds like something that my WVa. mountain-dwelling family members would say. :-P

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I'm like one of those idiot savants...well, except for the savant part.

"A long time ago, yet somehow in the future"

You spelled "nitpick" wrong.

It does sound awkward and wrong. However, it's awkward and right. Ergo, I just recast, as I said. It's one of the advantages of English; there's almost always more than one way to say something.

In the second example, "telling me" can be replaced with "statement," for example, and there's no doubt that "statement" is a noun. What's confusing in this particular instance is that "to tell" is a verb. However, the definition of "gerund" is "a verb, usually ending in '-ing,' used as a noun."

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Gillian

"Now everyone was giving her that kind of look UFOlogists get when they suddenly say, 'Hey, if you shade your eyes you can see it is just a flock of geese after all.'"

"You can't erase icing."

"I can't believe it doesn't work! I found it on the internet, man!"

Akhck, self-reference! It what you just said true or false? If false, is that the case for all absolute statements? If I were a supercomputer in Star Trek, I'd be dead now.

The problem is that we lack an obvious way to signal that the verb has been nouned, at least for that verb. With many other verbs, there are specific noun forms, like "receipt" and "reception" for "receive", or we can add "-ance" (compliance, variance) or, most often, "-tion" or one of its siblings, or even something rarer like "-ure" (failure) or "-al" (refusal). But "tell" gives us nothing but "-ing", which already has another, more common use.

But... in this case, the addition of the object "me" converts "telling" back into a verb and not a gerund.


From the previous web definition example
" when used as a noun, as in singing in We admired the choir's singing."

But if you insert an object after singing such as "carols" the sentence must read "We admired the choir singing carols." -because "singing" is no longer the object of "admired" but rather part of the objective clause "choir singing carols"

Similarly, in the previous construction with "telling" the phrase "you telling me" becomes an objective clause of the verb remember and "telling" is no longer a gerund.

To use "telling" as a gerund, the sentence would need to make "telling" into a noun such as: "I remember your telling."
To include "me" something awkward like: "I remember your telling to me."

Sounds like I got it exactly wrong then

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An emperor without enemies, a king without a kingdom, supported in life by the willing tribute of a free people.

Consider it an understood "to."

Look, I don't make the rules! This is how it's supposed to be. I think it sounds awkward and wrong, so I don't use it; I suggest the same to everyone else as well.

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Gillian

"Now everyone was giving her that kind of look UFOlogists get when they suddenly say, 'Hey, if you shade your eyes you can see it is just a flock of geese after all.'"

"You can't erase icing."

"I can't believe it doesn't work! I found it on the internet, man!"

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This simply suggests " I remember the occasion of you telling me ....."
It is only a simplification of the more formal . I believe both are acepted.
Best regards, Dan

LoL one of those ironic typos. Oh well.

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I'm like one of those idiot savants...well, except for the savant part.

"A long time ago, yet somehow in the future"