Gone and V-ed

[Salikoko Mufwene]

At 12:52 PM 11/7/2000 -0500, Johanna N. Franklin wrote:

>    It does mean that he did "drown his dinner in syrup."  The
>connotation is that he did something wrong, as in
>
>Can you believe that he just went and wrote that letter without telling me?
>That cat of yours has gone and destroyed my couch.
>
>    I'm more used to hearing it as "...went and...," obviously, but I
>have heard "gone" too (growing up in southern Illinois, rather rural).
>This construction was mainly used to discuss someone doing something bad.
>
>    Johanna, who wants UPS to stop by and pick up her defective monitor
>
Can we assume safely here that "gone" loses the literal meaning of MOTION? A
student thought the MOTION-less interpretation must be the
case--reminiscent of
"camouflaged 'come'" I think.

Sali.

**********************************************************
Salikoko S. Mufwene                        s-mufwene at uchicago.edu
University of Chicago                      773-702-8531; FAX 773-834-0924
Department of Linguistics
1010 East 59th Street
Chicago, IL 60637
http://humanities.uchicago.edu/humanities/linguistics/faculty/mufwene.html
**********************************************************
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://listserv.linguistlist.org/pipermail/ads-l/attachments/20001107/c4865f66/attachment.htm>