Be Going To + Infinitive: Origin and Development. Some Relevant Cases from the Helsinki Corpus

Pertejo, Paloma Núñez

doi:10.1080/003932799750041687

Cited by 12 publications

(5 citation statements)

References 0 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…Historically, be going to derives from a progressive construction with a literally motional sense, in which the infinitive functions as an adjunct of purpose. According to Núñez Pertejo (1999), the bleaching of the movement meaning (as reflected in PDE in the acceptability of sequences such as going to go ) began in the seventeenth century, paving the way for an increase in frequency. Others, however, date the significant growth of the quasi-modal later than this, including Dennis (1940:863), who suggests an onset in the mid-nineteenth century.…”

Section: Findings Of the Studymentioning

confidence: 99%

Quasi-modals and Modals in Australian English Fiction 1800-1999, with Comparisons across British and American English

Collins

2014

Journal of English Linguistics

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

This article seeks to extend beyond the almost exclusive concentration in studies of grammatical change over the Late Modern English period on British and American English. It traces the fortunes in Australian English of four quasi-modals that have been grammaticalizing rapidly over this period ( have to and have got to representing the domain of necessity/obligation, and want to and be going to representing volition/prediction), comparing them with semantically related modals ( must, should, ought to, will, and shall). Data are derived from two recently compiled corpora, COOEE and AusCorp, which together cover the period of approximately two centuries from the foundation of the first British colony in Australia in 1788 to the present day. Comparisons drawn with British and American English for the same period using data from the ARCHER corpus show Australian English evolving in the same general direction as the two longer-established varieties, but its endonormative independence being asserted in its users’ more extreme dispreference for the modals and their reluctance to embrace the quasi-modals as enthusiastically as users of American English.

show abstract

Section: Findings Of the Studymentioning

confidence: 99%

Quasi-modals and Modals in Australian English Fiction 1800-1999, with Comparisons across British and American English

Collins

2014

Journal of English Linguistics

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…The list of publications about the history of be going to is extensive (Perez 1990, Pertejo 1999, Danchev and Kytö 1994, Hilpert 2008, Garrett 2012, Traugott 2012, Traugott 2015). Yet the number of corpus-based studies that focus on the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries is much more limited, and essentially restricted to Disney (2009aDisney ( , 2009b and Nesselhauf (2007Nesselhauf ( , 2010Nesselhauf ( , 2012.…”

Section: Be Going To: From Intention To Predictionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In addition, most research on the history of the be going to has focused on the behaviour of the construction in Early Modern English: on the stages before and immediately after the start of the grammaticalization process, when the lexical verb to go combined with the preposition to and the progressive into a construction expressing first 'motion with intention', as in (1), and afterwards 'motionless intention', as in (2) (e.g. Pertejo 1999, Hilpert 2008, Traugott 2012.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Reading the intentions of be going to. On the subjectification of future markers

Budts

Petré

2016

Folia Linguistica

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

This paper provides a detailed corpus-based account of the formal and functional changes that be going to underwent in Late Modern English. Despite be going to’s popularity, such studies remain rare for this period, in which the construction’s grammaticalization went through a second phase. Our analysis shows that the first half of the eighteenth century witnessed a shift from intention to prediction, which originated in contexts with third person subjects. Reporting the intention of others generally involves a certain amount of guesswork, which eventually resulted in the creation of an additional, epistemic layer of prediction, reinforced by the gradual extension of be going to to express non-imminent future situations. It is argued that this shift involves an increase in subjectivity, as the emphasis gradually moved away from the grammatical subject to the speaker: what mattered was no longer the intentions of the subject, but the knowledge of the speaker about them. Attention is also drawn to parallel developments in other future markers, particularly will. Interestingly, and in spite of significant differences, each of these went through an intermediary stage that involved past tense uses with reference to a future in the past, which was already known to the speaker.

show abstract

“…Danchev & Kytö 1994; Mair 2004; Pérez 1990). Occasionally, the assumption that the rise of be going to has taken place at the expense of will (and possibly shall ) can be found, though this is not usually stated explicitly: ‘ be going to + infinitive is frequently used, especially in modern AmE, as a substitute for the pure future instead of shall and will ’ (Núñez Pertejo 1999: 140). I am aware of only two studies in which the diachronic substitution of be going to for other future time expressions is considered a possibility: The going-to -future .…”

Section: Previous Researchmentioning

confidence: 99%

The development of future time expressions in Late Modern English: redistribution of forms or change in discourse?

Nesselhauf¹

2010

English Language and Linguistics

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

This article provides the first comprehensive analysis of the development of the future time expressions will, 'll, shall, be going to, progressive with future time reference, and be to in the course of the late modern period. The article focuses on possible reasons for the considerable changes that have taken place in the past few centuries. To what degree can the changes be described as certain forms having been (partially) replaced by others? To what degree have general or register-specific changes in discourse affected the use of future time expressions? These questions are investigated on the basis of the British part of ARCHER (A Representative Corpus of Historical English Registers).The analysis reveals that it is a complex interaction of both types of processes that is responsible for the recent evolution of future time expressions. Redistribution processes turn out to be highly complex in themselves, going far beyond the frequently described replacement of shall by will and probably proceeding in chains. With respect to discourse change, one result is an unexpected overall decrease in the tendency of writers (and speakers) to refer to their own plans, intentions, etc. Partly responsible for this development is a discourse change in science writing, where the author has increasingly disappeared from the text, so that text structure is much less frequently expressed in terms of the author's intention. A further register-specific discourse change that the investigation brings to light is a development in diaries from an earlier restriction to reporting past events to the expression of more personal views, including hopes and fears for the future.

show abstract

Be Going To + Infinitive: Origin and Development. Some Relevant Cases from the Helsinki Corpus

Cited by 12 publications

References 0 publications

Quasi-modals and Modals in Australian English Fiction 1800-1999, with Comparisons across British and American English

Quasi-modals and Modals in Australian English Fiction 1800-1999, with Comparisons across British and American English

Reading the intentions of be going to. On the subjectification of future markers

The development of future time expressions in Late Modern English: redistribution of forms or change in discourse?

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About