Glenda,

    This "be going to" construction has been written about very thoughtfully by Joan Bybee. It has gramamticalized fairly recently (since Shakespeare's time) from a construction for expressing movement toward a place, to a construction expressing intention, to a construction that expresses epistemic prediction. ("I am going to New York. I am going to write a novel. It is going to rain hard.) In those last two manifestations, it can act as a substitute for "will." The best way to analyze your example, i think, is as modal auxiliary for "write." When the construction is followed by a noun ("I am going to the store"), "to the store" functions as a prepositional phrase.

    It's interesting to know that all our modals have gramamticalized from lexical verbs, most of that during the period for which we have written records. Bybee uses this as a key part of her argument for seeing language as "a complex adaptive system."

    Unlike "will," be going to can also convey past intention. ("I was going to pay my bills, but I ran out of money."

    Lanston Hughes' work makes for great classroom study since he uses nonstandard forms so thoughtfully and wisely.


Craig

________________________________
From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar <[log in to unmask]> on behalf of Conway, Glenda <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Tuesday, July 01, 2014 5:12 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: "I'm gonna write"--verb + infinitive or verb + auxiliary?

Greetings-

Today, in my Advanced English Grammar class, I showed Langston Hughes's "Daybreak in Alabama" as an example of a poem with two sentences.

I realized while showing the poem that I was not sure how to divide the slots of the first main clause, which is

...I'm gonna write me some music about
Daybreak in Alabama....

Shall I think of "I'm gonna write" as being equivalent to "I will write," thus considering "[a]m gonna" as an auxiliary to "write"?

Or shall I think of "I'm gonna write" as being equivalent to "I am going to write," thus considering "to write..." an adverbial infinitive phrase?

I would love to read some discussion on this clause and to be able to share it with my students afterward.



Thanks,

Glenda Conway
Professor, English
Coordinator, Harbert Writing Center
Department of English and Foreign Languages
Station 6420
University of Montevallo
Montevallo, AL 35115
205 665-6425 office
206 665-6422 fax
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