I think this is a false look-alike. The meaning seems to be a kind of polite emphatic in the negative examples you give. Not at all the meaning of I am going swimming.--or I am not going swimming.
Edith Wollin
-----Original Message-----
From: Spruiell, William C [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
Sent: Wednesday, March 16, 2005 3:18 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Go camping
While reading some of this thread (I'm still behind, so apologies if I'm
reinventing a wheel!) it struck me that this particular construction
seems to be more widely applied in the negative, especially with
commands:
Now, don't go taking this the wrong way....
*I'm going taking this the wrong way!
You shouldn't go thinking about it like that.
*You should go thinking about it like that.
You should go camping
You shouldn't go camping.
The positive versions may be restricted to "verbs of recreation," but
the negatives aren't. Or are the negatives false look-alikes?
Bill Spruiell
-----Original Message-----
From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar
[mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Johanna Rubba
Sent: Wednesday, March 16, 2005 6:05 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
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