Grammar Question(Tim)

It's very common to use the sentence: Do you mind me ___?

For example: Do you mind me smoking?

My question is why the blank in sentence should be V-ing?

Why can we just use "to V" in the blank?




*This explanation is my own, so it might be different from the truth... 

I think the size of a blank should be widen like this.

"Do you mind ___?"

The words after "mind" must be a kind of nouns.
By using V-ing, we can convert verbs into a kind of nouns. This is a reason why we must put V-ing in the blank you wrote.
By using "to V", we can also make nouns, but we can't control the subject when we use this.
If we use "to V", the sentence will be like this.

"Do you mind to smoke?"

But in this sentence, the smoker is "you". We must indicate that the smoker is "me".
And we can't insert the subject of verb "smoke" in this case.

To indicate the subject of the verb "smoke", we can use "me" or "my" before V-ing.

"Do you mind my smoking?"

Then we can indicate the smoker is "me".

Massy