If "camping" in that construction is treated as an adverb, I think we
have to at least acknowledge that it's qualitatively different from some
other participles that seem to occur in a similar context:

        (1)     We went camping
        (2)     He went whistling out the door (or, "The stone went
skittering              across...")

The second type lends itself (although with some strain) to a "while"
paraphrase ("While whistling, he went out the door," "While skittering,
the stone went across ...") -- they can be seen as "manner" adverbials.
I can't see the first that way.

Now, by itself that doesn't argue for *not* calling it an adverb --
adverbs are a notoriously varied bunch, the "none of the above" category
in traditional grammar. And I certainly wouldn't belabor the point too
much in a K-12 or even early college class. 

Off the classroom record, though, I can't help but wonder if it might be
useful to recognize a category of "serial verbs" in English --
verb+verbal constructions used frequently enough that they fuse into a
single pattern for speakers regardless of what grammarians would call
them. I've noticed my students certainly want to treat "start reading,"
"stop reading" and "go camping" quite differently from "discontinue
publishing"; I wonder if their inclinations might reflect psychological
reality (whatever that is) much better than the traditional treatment
does.  

Bill Spruiell
Dept. of English
Central Michigan University

-----Original Message-----
From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar
[mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Kischner, Michael
Sent: Friday, March 04, 2005 11:35 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Go camping

 Could anyone offer help on parsing "go camping" in "We go camping every
summer."Does camping modify go?  Could it be its direct object?  I
suppose it has to do with how one analyzes "go."

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