of "our" entering?/ of "us" entering?

[pontios]

1. All of this happened in the first minute of us entering the store.

2. All of this happened in the first minute of our entering the store.

I'm leaning towards 2. ("of our entering"), but wanted to hear your thoughts.

P.S.
For some strange reason, I'm somewhat more comfortable with 1. above restated in the following way:

All of this happened in the first minute of us three entering the store.

 

[AoratiMelani]

"Of our entering".
You need to use the possesive with the gerund in this case, because the focus is on the act of entering, not on the people.
When did it happen? After entering. Whose entering? Our entering.

See here:
http://www.english-for-students.com/Possessives-with-Gerunds.html

 

[nickel]

All of this happened in the first minute we entered the store. :)

I normally consider the use of the genitive before the gerund to be formal, the use of a pronoun to be more colloquial.

 

[Marinos]

Here at last is Theseus' turn to help us as a native speaker :)
From my student days I remember both ways as valid, and my poor experience says the same as nickel's. It is an intriguing grammar question, as the real issue is whether the gerund is closer to a verb or to a noun, I think.

 

[SBE]

Melani assumed that "entering" here is a gerund and it's interchangeable with "entrance" (so you use genitive).
But you are probably thinking that it is a present participle, introducing a participial phrase.

 

[Theseus]

In standard English (and my two grammar books support this; one other I have does not) both forms are acceptable. 'Our entering' is more formal but purists will (wrongly) insist on it as the only correct usage, because it means 'our entrance into the shop'. They quote examples like 'they didn't like him laughing', which (they say) must mean 'they didn't like him, whatever he was doing'. But educated usage prefers 'they didn't like him laughing'. 'His laughing' sounds stilted and very few would say it. 'Us entering' is naturally used in English. If you can't account for this in your model of the language, it's your model that is inadequate, whatever 'the rule' is supposed to be.:)

 

[pontios]

Thank you, everyone.

Grammar was wiped from the curriculum in the 70's and 80's in Australia; and I'm not a language student (and never have been) - so terms like genitive, present participle (and even gerund until recently) are or were foreign to me. I mostly rely on what sounds right.

Judging by your responses, it's not clear-cut; so I guess both ways are valid, as Marinos and Theseus mentioned.
I think Theseus summed it up well, and I sense he's right; that present thinking indeed allows a bit of flexibility/latitude - and that "us entering" sounds more natural.
Theseus's "him/his laughing" example works differently (to "our/us entering"), in that there's a chance of it being misinterpreted (that it's not "his laughing" that irks us, it's "him", the person themselves, that's irksome); but it's an important example, nonetheless, for the purists to note.

I liked Aorati Melani's explanation of how the "our entering" sentence works (its inner workings); and I agree that in formal circles "our entering" is not going to be frowned on.

nickel makes a good point - why not write the sentence in a simpler, more straight-forward way, and avoid the contention?

Thank you, all, for your help.

 

[Theseus]

You could rewrite it, Pontios, as Nickel suggested, but that doesn't address the question. 'I don't like him laughing' is the more common and indeed correct way of saying it. 'I don't like his laughing' sounds like someone trying to speak grammatically and not idiomatically. 'I don't like him [now] laughing, as he is doing' is immediate and good English. ''His laughing" is general, i.e. it means 'whenever he laughs' and is stilted English.:) Each language has its grammar and its idioms. No Englishman would say, e.g. 'It is I' but 'it's me', however 'grammatical and correct' it is supposed to be!

 

[pontios]

I think the thing about the gerund (laughing, etc) is that, at its heart, it's a doing word (a verb) - it ends in "ing" (I learnt this much at school) - and being a doing word, it'll always be referring to an ongoing (and consistent) action - one that unfolds or occurs regularly and over time.
So trying to use it against its nature to describe or convey a single event - his laughing (right now) - will always bring about a conflict, as you correctly pointed out.

The gerund is a beautiful thing; don't get me wrong. There was a thread where we were discussing "Quantitative Easing" ("easing" being the gerund, of course) which made me realise this (or at least think this). I felt none of the equivalent Greek terms that we came up with conveyed this ongoing "easing" of Quantitative Easing (if you think of it in terms of Quantitative "Relief/Ease" - which was what the Greek terms were conveying - vs Quantitative "Relieving/Easing" which is what they should have been conveying, you'll see what I'm getting at).