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[Yawarakaijin]

[BobbyBan]

[Yawarakaijin]

[fluffyhamster]

[SeasonedVet]

BobbyBan wrote:

[markle]

[SeasonedVet]

Thanks. I told the teacher days ago that they were both correct and she decided to change the question.

[tanuki]

Despite the original subject line saying "grammar question" the reality is that this "problem" is a combination of grammar and vocab-patterns.

Several people are right to ask for more contextual information because VERY often these kinds of silly grammar test questions are asked of students completely devoid of any kind of situational or pragmatic information... but it's actually not needed in this instance. And I'll show you why.

But first...

Please indulge me in a slight tangent that I promise is relevant!

Students at, say, Upper-Int level (and certainly at FCE-level and above) are given these big lists of verbs that either take "to do" or "doing".

This is taught as grammar.

And it couldn't be more unequivocally WRONG than if you were saying that the universe revolves around the Earth.

Or that Keanu Reeves is going to be written up in the history books as paralleling Marlon Brando.

Or that natto is a delicious and tasty treat which should be enjoyed by all first thing in the morning from small styrofoam containers.

If you currently teach this as grammar, please stop doing so; it's not.

This is a matter of vocab patterns. There is no magical generative system that students are looking for here. It is NOT grammar.

If you want to split hairs and be all conciliatory and warm and fuzzy and inclusive you can say it's "word grammar" but the fact is that these are more or less arbitrary patterns in the lexicon. Verbs A, B, C & D (+the other 4850-odd) take "to do" and verbs E, F,G, & H take "doing". (Yeah, there are two other groups in this kind of breakdown. That's for another time, perhaps.)

So, firstly, students are told that "forget" is always followed by "to". Bollocks.

"forget" is usually followed by [something, i.e, noun phrase], [(that) clause], or "to do"

... however...

...there is an expression in the English language that goes like this:

"I'll never forget doing [something]"

(As native or proficient speakers, the readers of this board will know that "I'll never forget to do [something]" has a completely different meaning, right?)

Now, I emphasised "usually", above. Why? Which is more frequently used in the language "forget to do" or "forget doing"?

That's a trick question! "forget doing" is ONLY used in the full vocab-pattern "[someone] will never forget doing".

So "forget to do" is the hands down winner in terms of frequency because how often, by comparison, do you think people use that other expression?


Re: The OP's exam Q issue... I think there's a good chance that the teacher who wrote it was gunning for a "to do" pattern answer, and possibly thinking that BOTH of the "doing" pattern answers were wrong!

So... back to the grammar!

Having established that "I'll never forget meeting him" and "I'll never forget having met him" are both perfectly permissible according to the particular vocab pattern being employed by the speaker... and... that the choice of verb to "slot into" the pattern produces a meaningful utterance...

(where "I'll never forget forgetting him..." is--if you want to be a complete pedant (pot'n'kettle, I know!), potentially meaningful--highly unlikely to be a meaningful sentence (because even if this were the idea, a native speaker would probably choose to say "I'll never forget the time (that) I forgot to do [something]")

...then it's simply a matter of emphasis. Using the "perfect aspect" to emphasise the "before-ness-ness" of the "meeting" in this example.

The reason that this choice (i.e. "I'll never forget having met him") sounds snooty is that it's redundant--due to the inherent meaning of the vocab pattern--and this kind of verbose emphasis tends to only associated with a particular social class.

Another example of what I mean by this last paragraph is something like:

"Excuse me, but do you perhaps think that you'd be ever so kind as to do X, my good chap?"



Ya feelin' me dawg?

Tanuki

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[fluffyhamster]