Comparative study on the use of the verbs “forget (esquecer-se)” and “remember (lembrar-se)” in 19th and 21st Century newspapers from Minas Gerais

Abstract

This research aimed to carry out a comparative study on the collocations of the verbs forget (esquecer-se) and remember (lembrar-se) in newspapers from the 19th and 21st centuries. It is theoretically based on Faraco (1997) and on the grammarians Brandão (1888), Brandão (1963), Luft (1976, 2008), and Cunha and Cintra (2017). As for methodology, we collected structures in which the verbs under analysis occurred in newspapers of each synchrony. Afterward, qualitative and quantitative analyses were performed in each synchrony, for each verb separately, and then the results obtained were compared between the centuries. We found that, in general, in these corpora, the simple non-pronominal form – of both verbs – was preferred by the writers over time, especially the one for remember (lembrar-se). This verb appears to have undergone some changes over time since the simple form with direct complement (DTV) that is now recognized as the standard of the language, alongside the pronominal form, was not recorded in the past-synchrony manuals consulted, and therefore, it seemed to be a stigmatized and innovative variant at the time. Furthermore, except for this case, it should be noted that, in both periods, the deviations from the norms were sufficiently restrained so that one could speak of change.