Has go-V ousted go-and-V?

Contemporary spoken American English prefers go-V to go-and-V. However, this is only a synchronic snapshot. Using the Corpus of Historical American English, the present empirical study of the diachronic development of go-and-V and go-V in 19th and 20th century American English texts shows that both constructions underwent a remarkably diverging development. Whereas go-V only started to rise significantly in frequency at the turn of the 20th century, displaying a more or less steady increase up to today’s norm, go-and-V dropped in frequency after having its peak in the second half of the 19th century. A close look at the grammatical context shows that, depending on the verb form, go-V took over from go-and-V at different stages.

Published online: 27 June 2013
https://doi.org/10.1075/scl.57.09bac