I forgot (about) telling her about it.

[sitifan]

1. I forgot telling her about it. (quoted from an English-Chinese dictionary)
2. I forgot about telling her about it. (by a Chinese teacher of English)
3. I forgot my father going to London. (Palmer)
4. I forgot about my father going to London. (by a Chinese teacher of English)

Are the above sentences acceptable to native speakers?

 

[5jj]

They are all grammatical. I would express most of the ideas in other ways.

 

[Tarheel]

@sitifan I would say:

I forgot I told her about it.

And:

I forgot my father went to London.

 

[Phaedrus]

3. I forgot my father going to London. (Palmer)
4. I forgot about my father going to London. (by a Chinese teacher of English)

Are the above sentences acceptable to native speakers?

Unlike (1) and (2), (3) and (4) are not equivalent in meaning; but (3) could be used instead of "I forgot my father while (I was) going to London."

 

[jutfrank]

The following have different meanings.

I forgot to tell her about it.
I forgot that I told her about it.

Which one do you mean?

 

[sitifan]

I was taught in school that "forget doing something" means "forget having done something."

 

[emsr2d2]

I was taught in school that "forget doing something" means "forget having done something."

I don't find "forget verb+ing" particularly natural.

I forgot I'd been there. (Not "I forgot being there".)
She forgot she'd made the bed. (Not "She forgot making the bed".)

 

[jutfrank]

I was taught in school that "forget doing something" means "forget having done something."

Don't use forget doing something.

• forget to do something
• forget that + clause
• forget about something

Learn the differences between these three patterns.

 

[Phaedrus]

Don't use forget doing something.

Unpopular though it may be, this pattern has long been recognized as acceptable with forget (see Quirk et al., p. 1190, list (iii), and CGEL, p. 1232, list [29]).

The meaning of forget doing something is don't remember doing something.

She forgets going to the circus.
She doesn't remember going to the circus.

 

[jutfrank]

She forgets going to the circus.

That sounds wrong to me as a paraphrase of She doesn't remember going to the circus.

In any case, I certainly wouldn't teach learners to use it. The only contexts I tend to teach forget + -ing is in cases such as:

I will never forget laying eyes on my daughter for the first time.

In such cases, forget denotes the action of the memory disappearing from mind rather than the state of not remembering.

 

[emsr2d2]

For me, "She doesn't remember going to the circus" is another way of saying "She has forgotten going to the circus".

 

[Phaedrus]

That sounds wrong to me as a paraphrase of She doesn't remember going to the circus.

It doesn't to me, not in the least.

In any case, I certainly wouldn't teach learners to use it. The only contexts I tend to teach forget + -ing is in cases such as:

I will never forget laying eyes on my daughter for the first time.

In such cases, forget denotes the action of the memory disappearing from mind rather than the state of not remembering.

Forget can be used in either a dynamic sense (denoting the departure of something from one's memory) or in a stative sense (denoting not having it in memory).

For me, "She doesn't remember going to the circus" is another way of saying "She has forgotten going to the circus".

"She has forgotten going to the circus" uses dynamic forget; "She forgets going to the circus" uses stative forget.

"She doesn't remember going to the circus" uses stative remember (having something in memory), not dynamic remember (the manifestation of a memory).

Arguably, the most appropriate paraphrase of a sentence involving a stative use of a verb will itself involve a stative use of a verb.

 

[jutfrank]

Phaedrus, do Quirk et al. list forget + -ing specifically in a stative sense? Is the 'circus' example yours or theirs? If you have time, would you tell me which other examples they give?

 

[sitifan]

I forgot meeting her in 1980. (i.e. 'I met her, but the meeting subsequently escaped my memory.')
'I forgot having met her' need have no past-time adjunct.
[my bold, quoted from A Comprehensive Grammar of the English Language (p. 553)]

 

[Phaedrus]

Phaedrus, do Quirk et al. list forget + -ing specifically in a stative sense?

No. They don't classify that complementation pattern as stative or dynamic.

Is the 'circus' example yours or theirs?

It's 100% homegrown.

 

[sitifan]

Unpopular though it may be, this pattern has long been recognized as acceptable with forget (see Quirk et al., p. 1190, list (iii), and CGEL, p. 1232, list [29]).

Is there a typo? I can't find list [29] on p. 1232.

 

[sitifan]

I forgot (about) going to the bank. [rare without about; 'I forgot that I went to the bank' or '. . . that I should have gone . . .']
(quoted from A Comprehensive Grammar of the English Language, p. 1193)

 

[Skrej]

The forget+gerund pattern is natural and common in AmE, anyway. The acceptability of the pattern does seem to be breaking down along the lines of AmE and BrE speakers, I notice. Regional differences, perhaps?

You frequently see this in the context of verbs that take both the gerund and infinitive, but with differences in meaning. At least, that's how I discuss it every semester.

forget + gerund = it happened, but you have no memory of the event (or at least temporarily forgot details).
forget + infinitive = it never happened, because you didn't remember to do it.

I forgot doing the laundry. (I must have done the laundry, because it's clean and I live alone, but I don't remember the occasion. Maybe I was drunk.)
I forgot to do the laundry. (I don't have any clean clothes, because in my absent mindedness, I didn't remember I was out of clean clothes.)

I was taught in school that "forget doing something" means "forget having done something."

Yes, that's exactly what I mean, above. Did you perhaps learn this under the context of gerunds and infinitives?

 

[sitifan]

The forget+gerund pattern is natural and common in AmE, anyway. The acceptability of the pattern does seem to be breaking down along the lines of AmE and BrE speakers, I notice. Regional differences, perhaps?

Yes, that's exactly what I mean, above. Did you perhaps learn this under the context of gerunds and infinitives?

Yes, I did.