The new column, Who’s your Daddy? Is it true 10-15% of children in modern society were not sired by their putative fathers? contains the following sentence:
emphasis added
I cannot conceive what the construction is that allows for a contraction, or a possessive there. I think it is an erroneous use of the apostrophe-s.
I think it’s actually formally correct, though a little old-fashioned. It works fine for me with or without the apostrophe-s:
The notion of a man’s being duped this way …
The notion of a man being duped this way …
I agree as to both.
I’ve seen them both, too. I thought they were both fairly common.
Technically, gerunds take possessives. It’s correct.
Yes, both are possible. It is not that “man” and “man’s” are interchangeable – they aren’t – but either one yields a grammatically correct sentence. Indeed, “man’s” is rather to be preferred, because it demands that “being” be taken as a gerund, rather than a present participle, which in turn means that the “of” must be associated with “being”, which is correct. “Man”, on the other hand, allows “being” to be taken as a present participle, which in turn means that the “of” is associated with “man”, which is not the sense desired.
Color me confused: what, particularly, is being “possessed” here? The only answer is “being duped”, but how can one possess that?
“The notion of being duped” is what the sentence would read without the term “a man’s.” Where in there is there a thing to be possessed other than the “notion?”
I’m not saying y’all are wrong; can someone point me to a grammar cite, such as a style manual or an English handbook? 
“Being duped”. Strange answer that, but that’s pretty much it.
It’s more a question of clarity than anything else. To expand on John W. Kennedy’s post, consider the following sentences:
I dislike that man standing in front of me.
I dislike that man’s standing in front of me.
In the first, “standing” is a participle. The sense of the sentence is “there is a man standing in front of me. I dislike him.” His position is merely a quantifier and has no bearing on whether or not I like him.
In the second, “standing” is a noun (which is possessed by the man–it’s his standing, not anyone else’s) and the sense of it is “there is a man standing in front of me. I dislike his standing place.” I have no opinion of the man, merely where he is standing.
Another way to look at it: grammar is weird.
ETA: Here are a couple of cites. Cite. Cite again.
Worse (albeit true) is this classic from “Why did so many Native Americans die of European diseases but not vice versa?” reprinted earlier in the week (emphasis mine):
Dear Cecil:
Why is it that native Americans died from **Europeans ** brought by the Europeans but Europeans didn’t die in great numbers from native American diseases?
Talk about a Freudian slip!
Yep. That should be the end of it.
Chestnuts, chestnuts. Benedict Arnold betrayed his country, but how could he have possessed it?
It’s kind of like the generic “man” who appears in cliches or axioms, isn’t it? “A man’s home is his castle,” “A man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do,” etc.
Except, of course, in the first case you offer, home is possessed by man, and that’s easy to understand, since home is a noun. In the second, the 's construction contracts man has, which is correct grammar to use with “got to.” So both of those are much more obvious.
I guess what was causing me trouble was looking at “being duped” and seeing it as a gerund phrase rather than as a participle construction. But, of course, it pretty much has to be a gerund if it acts as the object of the word “of.” When you combine the confusion with a typical episode of CRS (endemic at my age), it just didn’t look right. :eek: :o :smack: