A couple of weeks ago, I had the pleasure of presenting my research at the ISLE8 (CILC 2025) held at the University of Santiago de Compostela.
My presentation examined the complementation patterns of five English retrospective verbs — remember, forget, regret, recall, and recollect — focusing on their alternation between finite clauses and non-finite -ing complements. Using data from historical and present-day corpora (CEECS, CLMET 3.1, and GloWbE), the study traced a clear diachronic shift towards -ing complementation, which becomes increasingly dominant in later stages of English. The analysis showed that verbs such as remember and regret are at the forefront of this change, while recall and recollect follow the same trend to a lesser extent and forget remains comparatively stable. Overall, the findings suggest that the expansion of -ing complements is linked to broader changes in English complementation patterns and discourse style, particularly a growing preference for more experiential and subjective modes of expression
Many thanks to the organisers and participants for such a stimulating conference and for the insightful questions and feedback. It was a great opportunity to share work and engage with colleagues working on the linguistics of English from diverse theoretical and empirical perspectives.
