my being vs me being

I completely agree and would like to add that "being warned" is a gerund phrase, which is perhaps one reason why it sounds awkward. "Being" by itself does not make sense, since "be" must link to something. Naturally, "being warned" is referring to a state of being and not to anyone's physical existence.

Ack. Sorry. In the last entry I made a typo. It should have been "...substitute another noun" instead of "...substitue another nound."

Excuse my lack of typing skills. :P

Xuan, you are not the problem. This place, not providing a way to edit your posts, are ;)

And while I see that I am wrong I am not sure I will care enough to learn to say "my being". I am way past school teaching and it is hard to learn old dogs to sit, so if native english speakers commonly use it, that might be good enough for me. I most often can't even be bothered to type "English" with a capital letter, although I know it should be done.
But I finally got an explanation to this "my being" thing, and that's nice.

Haha...thanks, slemmet. I was worried there for a sec that I permanently marred the topic with my inaccuracies. :D

And I'm glad that we actually did something to help. :)

It appears the schooling for this grammatical conundrum is sparse. President Obama says "The chances of me being reelected are far greater than the chances of me being elected in the first place". Is there an advisor for this or was the TelePrompTer on loan?

umm I think that Without ME BEING warned is more physical existence than

Without MY BEING warned

.......and drown her in tears for the last day or two of their being together;

....whose society can raise no other emotion than surprise at there being any man
in the world would could.....

Northanger Abbey..Catherine and Mrs Morland

What about "warned"? I have a hard time accepting "warned" as an object or predicate adjective of "being". Couldn't the prepositional phrase: "me/my being warned", constructed as an independent clause, become: "I was warned", which constitutes it as a sentence in the passive voice, i.e. "I was warned by them"? Making the word "me" more suitable?

"She doesn't like me smoking in the house"
"She doesn't like my smoking in the house"
As AnWulf said both are correct, but I would say that the meaning is exactly the same. Use of the possessive seems to be mainly down to Fowler, who called the version with "me" a "fused participle", and condemned it. He said that "smoking" here is a gerund, and as a noun form should take the possessive "my". However Otto Jespersen, another great grammarian at the time, disagreed, and said that the "me" version was fine.

Most authorities allow the "me" version in object position. In the New Fowler's, RW Burchfield suggests that in modern usage the object forms and possessive forms are both used, but that the non-possessive form is now dominant, and that the possessive version is on the retreat.

The real problem, though, comes when it's in subject position:
"Me smoking in the house annoyed her"
"My smoking in the house annoyed her"
Those of use who usually use "me" in object position, might be more inclined to use "My" in subject position.

See: MWDEU - http://books.google.com/books?id=2yJusP0vrdgC&pg=PA753

I think comparing this with verbs of perception like "see" and "hear" is a bit of a red herring, because the" -ing" form here is not a gerund, but a participle - "I saw him crossing the road" is really like "I saw him and he was crossing the road" - We would never use a possessive there. And we can also use a bare infinitive in this construction, implying we saw the completed action - "I saw him cross the road" - We couldn't do that with the other example "*She doesn't like me smoke"

@Jasper -there is nothing wrong with "being warned" - it's not an object or predicate of "being"; the two words form a passive gerund. So the same rules apply: "without my being warned" or "without me being warned"; take your pick. To me Slemmet's original sentence with the gerund (whether with "me" or "my", "Can my car be repossessed without my/me being warned ?" is rather neater than an alternative with full verb, "Can my car be repossessed even if I haven't been warned".

I understand what you say, although I still feel "without me being" sounds fine. But what happens with this?
"without one being warned"

That seems to be correct. Shouldn't it be "without one's being warned", like in "without one's permission"?

What about these?
1a) You can drive with me being your navigator.
1b) You can drive without me being your navigator.
2a) You can drive with my being your navigator.
2b) You can drive without my being your navigator.

I again feel both 1 are correct and 2 sound weird. Thanks!

Inappropriate use of the non-possessive noun in a gerund sentence. (A gerund is a verbal--a word that is formed from a verb and retains certain characteristics of a verb (e.g., tenses, the ability to take an object) but no longer functions as that part of speech. A gerund always functions as a noun. It is formed by adding "ing" to the verb.)
Because a gerund functions as any other noun does, we must use the possessive case of nouns that modify it. We would write, for example, "My sister’s singing always pleases my father." In this sentence, "singing" is the gerund and "sister’s" is the possessive noun modifying it.
example "...me being nervous vs. my being nervous"

From what I can tell, the phrase "being warned" is not the same as a stand-alone gerund, such as cooking, studying, or running. For example, I could write, "Someone criticized my cooking" and stop right there, but it would be strange to write, "Can my car be repossessed without my being?" So I think we're dealing with a constructed participle and not a true gerund, so that "being warned" is the complete verb. To go back to the cooking, if I added our current phrase and changed the sentence, it would be something like "I don't like my cooking being criticized." It just seems like any verbal construction with "being" in front of another verb (being called, being harassed, being spoken to, etc.) is going to call for a different approach. To that end, I could write, "Can the group leave without me being called?" or "Can I take a trip to the island without my being vaccinated?" The difference is in the emphasis on the personal pronoun as an object (they should call me) or the information as a whole after the preposition (I can't leave without my vaccination).