Johanna, Thank you for this discussion--makes sense to me! Edith -----Original Message----- From: Johanna Rubba [mailto:[log in to unmask]] Sent: Wednesday, March 16, 2005 3:05 PM To: [log in to unmask] Subject: Re: Go camping 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 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ To join or leave this LISTSERV list, please visit the list's web interface at: http://listserv.muohio.edu/archives/ateg.html and select "Join or leave the list" Visit ATEG's web site at http://ateg.org/ To join or leave this LISTSERV list, please visit the list's web interface at: http://listserv.muohio.edu/archives/ateg.html and select "Join or leave the list" Visit ATEG's web site at http://ateg.org/