Has go -V ousted go-and -V?
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Ingo Bachmann
Abstract
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.
Abstract
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.
Chapters in this book
- Prelim pages i
- Table of contents v
- List of contributors vii
- Introduction 1
-
Sequence and order
- Sequence and order 13
- Mom and Dad but Men and Women 35
- Sequences of size adjectives in text 47
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Competing constructions
- The competition between the intensifiers dead and deadly 71
- Has go -V ousted go-and -V? 91
- The construction cannot help -ing and its rivals in Modern English 113
- From reduction to emancipation 133
- Complex prepositions and variation within the PNP construction 153
-
Emerging patterns
- A finer definition of neology in English 177
- A corpus-based study of gender assignment in recent English loanwords in Norwegian 209
- The return of the prefix? New verb-particle combinations in blogs 223
-
Correlating patterns and meaning
- Modality and the V wh pattern 247
- Assessing corpus search methods in onomasiological investigations 271
- Author index 293
- Subject index 297
Chapters in this book
- Prelim pages i
- Table of contents v
- List of contributors vii
- Introduction 1
-
Sequence and order
- Sequence and order 13
- Mom and Dad but Men and Women 35
- Sequences of size adjectives in text 47
-
Competing constructions
- The competition between the intensifiers dead and deadly 71
- Has go -V ousted go-and -V? 91
- The construction cannot help -ing and its rivals in Modern English 113
- From reduction to emancipation 133
- Complex prepositions and variation within the PNP construction 153
-
Emerging patterns
- A finer definition of neology in English 177
- A corpus-based study of gender assignment in recent English loanwords in Norwegian 209
- The return of the prefix? New verb-particle combinations in blogs 223
-
Correlating patterns and meaning
- Modality and the V wh pattern 247
- Assessing corpus search methods in onomasiological investigations 271
- Author index 293
- Subject index 297
