The use of the present participle in progressive aspects ("I am 
thinking") definitely derives historically from the preposition "on" 
plus the gerund. The "on" underwent the process linguists call 
"grammaticalization" to become the prefix 'a-', which some modern 
dialects of English retain, but most have lost.

This development is not unknown in other languages. For example, Modern 
Aramaic has developed a whole set of progressive-aspect constructions 
using the locational preposition that is the equivalent of English 'at' 
or 'in'. The preposition attaches to the base or infinitive form of the 
verb in that language. Most Semitic languages have only two verb stems, 
one for past and one for non-past; Aramaic has developed quite a few.

I remain convinced that "go X-ing" is a special construction that has 
lexicalized to mean "engage in a particular (usually recreational) 
activity". It names the category of activity, I think, not a particular 
instance of it; hence "What is she doing right now? She is going 
hunting" means not that she is hunting at the moment, but that she is on 
the way to a place where she will engage in the activity.

In other words, I don't believe it is ordinary "go" plus an adverbial 
gerund, assembled in real time as other syntactic phrases would be. I 
believe we have numerous "go X-ing" lexical items stored as wholes, 
which we retrieve as wholes in ongoing speech. It appears that we can 
create new versions by analogy, such as "go house-hunting".

When we were discussing this a while ago, I couldn't find a semantic 
commonality among the verbs that follow "go" apart from the majority 
being recreational activities. But looking closer, I see that it might 
have to be an activity which inherently involves progressive 
point-to-point motion: sailing, horsebackriding, birding, berry-picking, 
house-hunting, rabbit-hunting, skiing, rollerskating, hiking, climbing, 
swimming, running, shopping, caroling, etc. We do not use the 
construction for recreational or other activities that are more 
sedentary or focused on a single location: card-playing, reading, 
TV-watching, music-listening, sunset-watching (suggests several sunsets 
in succession), laundering (at the laundromat), house-painting, 
gardening, sunbathing (maybe?), furniture-refinishing, etc. "Going 
antiquing" suggests going to numerous shops to look at antiques.

Although I still wouldn't call this an aspect (maybe I should), it 
definitely has aspectual qualities, similar to iterative and habitual 
aspects, which feature multiple cycles of the verb's action over a span 
of time. In this case it's more like one whole cycle of the verb's 
action includes multiple sub-events, such as the single cycle of a 
swimming stroke or running stride, or the multiple tries one will make 
at rabbits or houses along the way.

"Go" would be a perfect fit for such a construction; it would supply the 
schematic path-oriented motion over which to distribute individual 
cycles of action.

German uses its verb "go" in similar ways: "go dancing" = "tanzen 
gehen"; "go shopping" = "einkaufen gehen"; but it seems to be more 
permissive about the actions that can be named: "schlafen gehen" = "go 
to bed (lit. sleep)", "spielen gehen", "go play".

This is all armchair linguistics, but it's a place to start. I inquired 
about this construction on a linguistics list, but haven't gotten any 
detailed responses yet.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Johanna Rubba   Associate Professor, Linguistics
English Department, California Polytechnic State University
One Grand Avenue  • San Luis Obispo, CA 93407
Tel. (805)-756-2184  •  Fax: (805)-756-6374 • Dept. Phone.  756-2596
• E-mail: [log in to unmask] •      Home page: 
http://www.cla.calpoly.edu/~jrubba
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

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