Cover not available
Article published In:
Journal of Historical Pragmatics
Vol. 25:1 (2024) ► pp.33–66

“Don’t go getting into trouble again!”

The emergence and diachrony of the English Go VPing construction

ORCID logo | University of Santiago de Compostela
Building on Goldberg’s (2006: 52) observation regarding the existence of “a family of related constructions in English” centred around the verb go, this article explores the history of the construction exemplified in the title (“Don’t go getting into trouble again!”) and its relation to other members of the network of go-constructions. The analysis, conducted using three large corpora, shows that the Go VPing construction emerges from two source constructions (one with an –ing participle following the verb go and the other with an infinitive) which exhibit overlap in terms of certain aspects of their form and meaning. From its earliest attestations in the eighteenth century, the Go VPing construction has grown increasingly more interpersonal, and has become conventionalized as a marker of admonitive mood (Bybee et al. 1994: 321) which serves to dissuade or limit the performance of an activity that is apprehended as undesirable and counter-normative.
Keywords: admonitive mood, auxiliation, construction grammar, counter-normativity, expeditionary go , go-constructions, horizontal link, multiple source constructions
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Earlier research on the Go VPing construction
  • 3.Theoretical background
  • 4.Data sources
  • 5. Go: Usage and sense development
  • 6.The Go VPing construction and its precursors
    • 6.1The VVingOBL construction
    • 6.2The Not Go-to-Infinitive construction
    • 6.3The Expeditionary Go construction
  • 7.The emergence and development of the Go VPing construction
    • 7.1Late Middle English and Early Modern English (1470s–1690s)
    • 7.2Late Modern English (1710–1920)
    • 7.3Present-Day English (1975–1994)
  • 8.Summing up
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
Available under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial (CC BY-NC) 4.0 license.

For any use beyond this license, please contact the publisher at [email protected].

Published online: 15 April 2021
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/jhp.20006.fan
References (79)
References
Andrews, J. Richard. 2003. Introduction to Classical Nahuatl. University of Oklahoma Press: Norman Publishing.Google Scholar
Baayen, Harald and Rochelle Lieber. 1991. “Productivity and English Derivation: A Corpus-Based Study”. Linguistics 29 (5): 801–843. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Baker, Helen and Tony McEnery. 2014. Language Surrounding Poverty in Early Modern England: Constructing Seventeenth-Century Beggars and Vagrants. Lancaster: Centre for Corpus Approaches to Social Sciences, Lancaster University.Google Scholar
Barðdal, Jóhanna and Spike Gildea. 2015. “Diachronic Construction Grammar: Epistemological Context, Basic Assumptions and Historical Implications”. In Jóhanna Barðdal, Elena Smirnova, Lotte Sommerer and Spike Gildea (eds), Diachronic Construction Grammar, 1–49. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Biber, Douglas. 1988. Variation across Speech and Writing. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Biber, Douglas, Stig Johansson, Geoffrey Leech, Susan Conrad and Edward Finegan. 1999. Longman Grammar of Spoken and Written English. Harlow, Essex: Pearson Education Limited.Google Scholar
Blake, Norman F. 1981. Non-standard Language in English Literature. London: André Deutsch.Google Scholar
Blánquez Fraile, Agustín. 1954. Diccionario Latino-Español. [‘Latin–Spanish Dictionary.’] Barcelona: Editorial Ramón Sopena S. A.Google Scholar
BNC BYU = Davies, Mark. 2004–. British National Corpus (from Oxford University Press). URL: [URL]
Bolinger, Dwight. 1983. “The Go-Progressive and Auxiliary-Formation”. In Frederick B. Agard, Gerald Kelley, Adam Makkai and Valerie Becker Makkai (eds), Essays in Honour of Charles F. Hockett, 153–167. Leiden: E. J. Brill.Google Scholar
Bourdin, Philippe. 2003. “On Two Distinct Uses of Go as a Conjoined Marker of Evaluative Modality”. In Roberta Facchinetti, Manfred Krug and Frank Palmer (eds), Modality in Contemporary English, 103–127. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Bybee, Joan. 2010. Language, Usage and Cognition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Bybee, Joan, Revere Perkins and William Pagliuca. 1994. The Evolution of Grammar: Tense, Aspect, and Modality in the Languages of the World. Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Bybee, Joan and Rena Torres Cacoullos. 2009. “The Role of Prefabs in Grammaticization: How the Particular and the General Interact in Language Change”. In Roberta Corrigan, Edith A. Moravcsik, Hamid Ouali and Kathleen M. Wheatley (eds), Formulaic Language, 187–219. (Volume 1: Distribution and Historical Change .) Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Carracedo Doval, Juan José. 2018. Los paradigmas de imperativo de las lenguas indoeruropeas antiguas. [‘Imperative Paradigms in Ancient Indo-European Languages.’] (PhD thesis.) Madrid: Universidad Complutense de Madrid.Google Scholar
CLMET3.0 = De Smet, Hendrik, Hans-Jürgen Diller and Jukka Tyrkkö. 2013. The Corpus of Late Modern English Texts. (Version 3.0.) Leuven: K.U. Leuven.Google Scholar
Coupe, Alexander R. 2007. A Grammar of Mongsen Ao. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Coussé, Evie, Peter Andersson and Joel Olofsson (eds). 2018. Grammaticalization Meets Construction Grammar. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
de Groot, Casper. 2007. “ The king is on huntunge: On the Relation between Progressive and Absentive in Old and Early Modern English”. In Mike Hannay and Gerard J. Steen (eds), Structural-Functional Studies in English Grammar: In Honour of Lachlan Mackenzie, 175–190. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
De Smet, Hendrik. 2013. Spreading Patterns: Diffusional Change in the English System of Complementation. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
. 2014. “Constrained Confusion: The Gerund/Participle Distinction in Late Modern English”. In Marianne Hundt (ed.), Late Modern English Syntax, 224–238. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
DOE = Cameron, Angus, Ashley Crandell Amos, Antonette di Paolo Healey et al. (eds). 2018. Dictionary of Old English: A to I online. Toronto: Dictionary of Old English Project. Available online at: [URL]
EEBO BYU = Davies, Mark. 2017. Early English Books Online. Part of the SAMUELS project. Available online at: [URL]
Erman, Britt and Beatrice Warren. 2000. “The Idiom Principle and the Open Choice Principle”. Text 20 (1): 29–62. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Fanego, Teresa. 1996. “The Development of Gerunds as Objects of Subject-Control Verbs in English (1400–1760)”. Diachronica 13 (1): 29–62. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 2007. “Drift and the Development of Sentential Complements in British and American English from 1700 to the Present Day”. In Javier Pérez-Guerra, Dolores González-Álvarez, Jorge L. Bueno-Alonso and Esperanza Rama-Martínez (eds), “Of Varying Language and Opposing Creed”: New Insights into Late Modern English, 161–235. Bern: Peter Lang.Google Scholar
. 2015. “Multiple Sources in Language Change: The Role of Free Adjuncts and Absolutes in the Formation of English ACC-ing Gerundives.”. In Mikko Höglund, Paul Rickman, Juhani Rudanko and Jukka Havu (eds), Perspectives on Complementation: Structure, Variation and Boundaries, 179–205. Houndmills, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.Google Scholar
. 2016. “The Great Complement Shift Revisited: The Constructionalization of ACC-ing Gerundives”. Functions of Language 23 (1): 84–119. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 2020. “On the History of the English Progressive Construction Jane Came Whistling down the Street ”. Journal of English Linguistics 48 (4): 319–354. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Fillmore, Charles J. 1971. “Coming and Going”. In Charles J. Fillmore, Santa Cruz Lectures on Deixis, 50–69. Bloomington, Indiana: Indiana University Linguistics Club.Google Scholar
Flach, Susanne. 2015. “ Let’s Go Look at Usage: A Constructional Approach to Formal Constraints on Go-verb ”. In Peter Uhrig and Thomas Herbst (eds), Yearbook of the German Cognitive Linguistics Association, 231–252. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.Google Scholar
Flick, Jane. 1975. Smollett’s Manipulation of Language in the Tabitha Bramble and Winifred Jenkins Letters in Humphrey Clinker. (PhD thesis.) Vancouver, Canada: University of British Columbia.Google Scholar
Garrett, Andrew. 2012. “The Historical Syntax Problem: Reanalysis and Directionality”. In Dianne Jonas, John Whitman and Andrew Garrett (eds), Grammatical Change. Origins, Nature, Outcomes, 52–72. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Givón, Talmy. 1979. On Understanding Grammar. New York, San Francisco and London: Academic Press.Google Scholar
Goldberg, Adele E. 1995. A Construction Grammar Approach to Argument Structure. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
2006. Constructions at Work. The Nature of Generalization in Language. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
2019. Explain Me This. Creativity, Competition, and the Partial Productivity of Constructions. Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Hilpert, Martin. 2013. Constructional Change in English: Developments in Allomorphy, Word Formation, and Syntax. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 2018. “Three Open Questions in Diachronic Construction Grammar”. In Evie Coussé, Peter Andersson and Joel Olofsson (eds), Grammaticalization Meets Construction Grammar, 21–39. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 2019. Construction Grammar and Its Application to English. (Second edition.) Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.Google Scholar
Himmelmann, Nikolaus P. 2004. “Lexicalization and Grammaticization: Opposite or Orthogonal?” In Walter Bisang, Nikolaus P. Himmelmann and Bjorn Wiemer (eds), What Makes Grammaticalization: A Look from Its Components and Its Fringes, 21–42. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.Google Scholar
Höglund, Mikko and Kaj Syrjänen. 2016. “Corpus of Early American Literature”. ICAME Journal 401: 17–38. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Hopper, Paul J. and Elizabeth Closs Traugott. 2003. Grammaticalization. (Second edition.) Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Huber, Judith. 2017. Motion and the English Verb: A Diachronic Study. Oxford: Oxford University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Huddleston, Rodney and Geoffrey K. Pullum. 2002. The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Hyland, Ken. 2005. “Stance and Engagement: A Model of Interaction in Academic Discourse”. Discourse Studies 7 (2): 173–192. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Jones, Peter. 2017. “Medieval Homelessness and Moral Judgment”. London: Institute of Historical Research, School of Advanced Study, University of London. Available online at: [URL]
Kranich, Svenja. 2010. The Progressive in Modern English: A Corpus-Based Study of Grammaticalization and Related Changes. Amsterdam: Rodopi. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Lakoff, George. 1974. “Syntactic Amalgams”. Chicago Linguistics Society 101: 321–344.Google Scholar
Langacker, Ronald W. 1987. Foundations of Cognitive Grammar. (Volume 1: Theoretical Prerequisites ). Stanford, California: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
Lehmann, Christian. 1995. Thoughts on Grammaticalization. München and Newcastle: Lincom Europa.Google Scholar
Los, Bettelou. 2005. The Rise of the To-Infinitive. Oxford: Oxford University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Lyons, John. 1977. Semantics. (Volume 21.) Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
McColm, Dan and Graeme Trousdale. 2019. “Whatever Happened to Whatever?” In Nuria Yáñez-Bouza, Emma Moore, Linda Van Bergen and Willem B. Hollmann (eds), Categories, Constructions, and Change in English Syntax, 81–104. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Mair, Christian. 2002. “Three Changing Patterns of Verb Complementation in Late Modern English: A Real-Time Study Based on Matching Text Corpora”. English Language and Linguistics 6 (1): 105–131. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 2003. “Gerundial Complements after Begin and Start: Grammatical and Sociolinguistic Factors, and How They Work against Each Other”. In Günther Rohdenburg and Britta Mondorf (eds), Determinants of Grammatical Variation in English, 329–345. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.Google Scholar
Matsumoto, Noriko. 2016. Multi-Verb Sequences in English: Their Classification and Functions. PhD thesis. Kobe: Kobe University.Google Scholar
MED = Kurath, Hans, Sherman M. Kuhn and Robert E. Lewis (eds). 1952–2001. Middle English Dictionary. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press. Available online at: [URL]
Mustanoja, Tauno F. 1960. A Middle English Syntax: Part I. Helsinki: Société Néophilologique.Google Scholar
OED = Oxford English Dictionary Online. Available online at: [URL]
Ogura, Michiko. 2002. Verbs of Motion in Medieval English. Cambridge: D. S. Brewer.Google Scholar
Petré, Peter. 2016. “Grammaticalization by Changing Co-Text Frequencies, or Why [BE-Ving] Became the ‘Progressive’”. English Language and Linguistics 20 (1): 31–54. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Petré, Peter and Freek Van de Velde. 2018. “The Real-Time Dynamics of the Individual and the Community in Grammaticalization”. Language 94 (4): 867–901. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Pijpops, Dirk, Isabeau De Smet and Freek Van de Velde. 2018. “Constructional Contamination in Morphology and Syntax: Four Case Studies”. Constructions and Frames 10 (2): 269–305. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
PPCME2 = Kroch, Anthony, Ann Taylor and Beatrice Santorini. 2000–. The Penn-Helsinki Parsed Corpus of Middle English. (Second edition, release 4.) Philadelphia, Pennsylvania: Department of Linguistics, University of Pennsylvania.Google Scholar
Quirk, Randolph, Sidney Greenbaum, Geoffrey Leech and Jan Svartvik. 1985. A Comprehensive Grammar of the English Language. London: Longman.Google Scholar
Real Academia Española. 2009. Nueva gramática de la lengua española. Sintaxis II. [‘A New Grammar of the Spanish Language. Syntax II.’] Madrid: Espasa Libros, S. L. U.Google Scholar
Ringe, Donald and Ann Taylor. 2014. The Development of Old English. Oxford: Oxford University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Salkie, Raphael. 2010. “On Going ”. In Bert Cappelle and Naoaki Wada (eds), Distinctions in English Grammar: Offered to Renaat Declerck, 169–190. Tokyo: Kaitakusha.Google Scholar
Sinclair, John. 2004. Trust the Text: Language, Corpus and Discourse. London and New York: Routledge. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Spears, Arthur K. 1982. “The Black English Semi-Auxiliary Come ”. Language 58 (4): 850–872. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Traugott, Elizabeth Closs and Graeme Trousdale. 2013. Constructionalization and Constructional Changes. Oxford: Oxford University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Van de Velde, Freek. 2014. “Degeneracy: The Maintenance of Constructional Networks”. In Ronny Boogaert, Timothy Colleman and Gijsbert Rutten (eds), Extending the Scope of Construction Grammar, 141–179. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Van de Velde, Freek, Hendrik De Smet and Lobke Ghesquière. 2013. “Introduction: On Multiple Source Constructions in Language Change”. Special issue of Studies in Language 37 (3): 473–489.Google Scholar
Vendler, Zeno. 1957. “Verbs and Times”. The Philosophical Review 661: 143–160. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Visser, Frederikus Theodorus. 1963–1973. An Historical Syntax of the English Language. Leiden: Brill.Google Scholar
Wright, Susan. 1994. “The Mystery of the Modal Progressive”. In Dieter Kastovsky (ed.), Studies in Early Modern English, 467–485. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Cited by (1)

Cited by one other publication

Fanego, Teresa
2023.  Tomorrow I’ll go (a) shopping: on the history of the Expeditionary Go construction and its relation to the absentive. Folia Linguistica 57:s44-s1 ► pp. 1 ff. DOI logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 4 july 2024. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.