The current obsession with "Gone Missing"

[Laurence Horn]

At 10:07 AM -0700 6/8/09, Arnold Zwicky wrote:
>On Jun 7, 2009, at 11:24 AM, Chris Waigl wrote:
>
>>On 7 Jun 2009, at 19:12, Cohen, Gerald Leonard wrote:
>>>
>>>Is there any possibility of  English "gone missing" being influenced
>>>by
>>>German "verloren gegangen" (lost; missing)?
>>
>>
>>Without taking sides on your question: "verloren gehen" is not 100%
>>analogous to "go missing". I'd gloss it as "go lost".
>
>in any case, it's a stretch to look to another language as the source
>of an idiom that has a plausible development in english.  "go missing"
>unpacks the meaning components of similar verbs, like "disappear": a
>general change-of-state verb plus a specification of the end-state.
>semantic generalization from motional uses of "go"
>to other changes of state (as in "go crazy/wild/etc." and some other
>classes of examples) gives us the "go" of "go missing".
>
>(if "go missing" had appeared first in AmE, where there are many
>pockets of German influence, then i might have taken the idea of a
>German source more seriously, at least for a moment, despite the
>differences in formal details.)

Or pockets of Yiddish influence.  One or other, I assume, is
responsible for a different "go" formation in English, "go know".

LH

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