query: grammaticalization go/be.in > negation

[Hartmut Haberland]

Very much à propos, I just got a mail from our departmental secretary (the language is Danish)

Min datter       er     desværre        gået   hen          og    blevet      syg
My   daughter has  unfortunately   gone  DIRECT  and  become  ill

You couldn't say that with rask 'well' - unless you are waiting for an inheritance and the person you expected to die got well again.

(This works the same way without the desværre 'unfortunately'.)

Hartmut Haberland

Den 01-02-2013 00:28, Nigel Vincent skrev:
Italian has a passive periphrasis constructed with the verb andare 'go' which can only be used with verbs which express a negative outcome. Thus:

La casa è andata distrutta 'the house was (lit. went) destroyed'
La lettera è andata perduta 'the letter got (went) lost'

but not:
*La casa è andata costruita 'the house went built'
*La lettera è andata trovata 'the house went found'

Nigel



Professor Nigel Vincent, FBA
Professor Emeritus of General & Romance Linguistics
The University of Manchester

Vice-President for Research & HE Policy, The British Academy

Linguistics & English Language
School of Arts, Languages and Cultures
The University of Manchester
Manchester M13 9PL
UK



http://www.llc.manchester.ac.uk/subjects/lel/staff/nigel-vincent/



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