I'm uncomfortable considering go Ving a serial verb construction. While I'm aware that serial verb constructions come in a variety of forms, one of the hardest things to demonstrate about the is any syntactic dependency, although Baker's work makes progress in that direction if you like GB theory. In a typical serial verb language a sentence may contain two or more verbs that are, if the language marks this, all finite or all non-finite. In Ekpari, finiteness is marked by a prefix that is absent with nonfinite forms like imperatives. But in a sentence like
mawa yitsi awa yiru
M M M M M H M H (M = mid tone, H = high tone
I-took yam went market
The imperative would be
wa yitsi wa yiru
M M M H M H (M = mid tone, H = high tone
take yam go market
There is no clear main verb, but there can be only one negation, so it behaves like a single clause.
There are variations on this, but the evidence is pretty clear that these are neither dependency structures nor coordinate structures. I laid all this out in a paper "Serial Verbs" I did in 1970 in Studies in African Linguistics that pretty much started modern discussion of serial verbs, not because of any particular brilliance but just because I had the good luck to be working on some languages at the time that stubbornly resisted treatment within the Main Verb + multiple arguments structure of transformational theory of that time.
I tend to go along with McCawley's claim that these go constructions are aspectual, followed, as they are, by participial forms, a pretty clear sign of an aspectual structure in English.
Herb
-----Original Message-----
From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar on behalf of Spruiell, William C
Sent: Thu 3/17/2005 5:21 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Go camping
Thanks Jo --
I had had one of those moments in which one realizes that a construction
one has been using since childhood is really, really weird. I have no
problem with viewing the "Go camping" type as different from the "Don't
go thinking" type, and with viewing both as serial verb constructions. I
use an approach that's founded on the same kinds of initial premises as
you do though -- we're both quite comfortable with the notion of serial
verb constructions in English, etc. I'm not sure what other approaches
would do with this type of material. Viewing serial verbs as equivalent
to single lexical items might solve the problem for some theories, but
that has its problems as well. "To go camping" is more than just "to go
camp" with an "-ing" suffix; otherwise, "I'm about to go camp" and "I'm
about to go camping" wouldn't seem as different as they do. A semantic
explanation involving quasi-aspectual differences makes perfect sense --
but undermines the "fused item" explanation.
If students are using a "traditional-esque" grammar framework, though,
serial verbs probably won't be acknowledged much, if at all. Would the
difference between the two types justify calling the "X-ing" element in
them by different names? How I'd go discussing this in a graduate class,
and how I'd go discussing it in an undergraduate class, would be quite
different (and with ninth-graders, I'm not sure what I'd do, other than
to try to get them to play with variations to see how much fun they
could have with it and to see how chewy their own language is).
Bill Spruiell
-----Original Message-----
From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar
[mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Jo Rubba
Sent: Thursday, March 17, 2005 1:42 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Go camping
Bill,
You say you're behind on the thread ... so forgive me if this is
inappropriate ...
"go thinking" doesn't at all fit the semantics I'm ascribing to this
special "go X-ing" construction. As I noted in my post, this seems to
be a largely lexicalized pattern which can be extended to verbs that fit
the semantics of an activity consisting of path-directed motion, which
may involve sub-events such as stopping to watch a particular bird or
look at a candidate house to buy.
Remember that I analyze this as a fixed construction, not one assembled
like other non-lexicalized phrases.
"Go" is such a semantically general verb, it is available for many
grammaticalized uses, and not only in English. "Don't go thinking"
clearly uses "go" in some such sense, and it is clearly a negative
polarity item (as is "any" in "I don't have any change" or "an inch" in
"I pushed and pushed, but it didn't move an inch!"). Lots of basic verbs
of posture and motion are used to create complex sorts of verb
constructions (there's a whole lit. on serial verb constructions in the
world's languages).
***************************************************
Johanna Rubba, Associate Professor, Linguistics
English Department, Cal Poly State University
San Luis Obispo, CA 93407
Tel. 805-756-2184 ~ Dept. phone 805-756-2596
Dept. fax: 805-756-6374 ~ E-mail: [log in to unmask]
URL: http://www.cla.calpoly.edu/~jrubba
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