GoToGo on Language Log

[Wilson Gray]

"[Y]ou can go for decades without realizing that lots of other people don't
use this construction, ever."

That certainly strikes a chord with me. I don't have a name for this kind of
construction, but I considered strings like "She was so mean and evil that
_couldn't anybody stay_ with her"  to be as fully standard as "... _nobody
could stay_ ..." till Haj Ross happened specifically to mention in a lecture
that such strings are only a BE/SE kind of thing.

Speaking of BE/SE, how well known is the use of "go" to mean "intend." E.g.,
"I _went_ to hit him, but he backed off." "Excuse me for stepping on your
shoe. I didn't _go_ to do it." Etc.

-Wilson

On 5/3/06, Arnold M. Zwicky <zwicky at csli.stanford.edu> wrote:
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> Subject:      GoToGo on Language Log
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> a replay of some things that came around first here:
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>   http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/003106.html
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