What's correct: "I saw him eating" or "I saw his eating"? [duplicate]

Solution 1:

After thinking about this a bit, I'm thinking that maybe it just depends on the focus of the statement. If the action of a person's eating is my focus, then I would say, "I saw his eating." But if the person is my focus and he also happens to be eating, I would say, "I saw him eating."

The rule here seems to be, "If I can remove the participial phrase and still have the statement make sense, then I should use the objective instead of the possessive." If my focus is "him", then "eating" is just extra info and can be removed, so "I see him eating" would be correct. But if my focus is "eating," then removing it would make the sentence nonsensical, so "I see his eating" would be correct.

So the final answer is, both could be correct, and which should be used depends on context.