Constructional Changes And Constructionalization Of English Go-V_bare Construction

The go-νbare construction is now widely used both in British English and American English, which expresses the intention to carry out the activity denoted by the second verb in the construction and emphasizes the initiation of the activity. The construction has some special features that make it differ from other similar constructions, such as the inflection condition, insertion condition, and stacking etc. Furthermore, the form of the construction is also strange because it may be considered unacceptable according to traditional English grammar. Despite its frequent use and all these extraordinary features, there are not enough discussions over the construction in the literature. Previous studies over the construction are generally based on synchronic description, and only very few of them are concerned with the diachronic aspect. Under this background, the present thesis attempts to account for the arising of the construction and the development after its appearance within the framework of the constructionalization model proposed by Traugott & Trousdale (2013).The thesis attempts to answer the following question:(ⅰ) What is the source of go-νbare construction? (ⅱ) What are the constructional changes that relative linguistic form has gone through before constructionalization of go-νbare look place? (iii) What are the constructional changes that go-νbare construction has gone through after the constructionalization? (ⅳ) What are the mechanisms and motivations involved in the process?Major findings of the thesis can be summarized as follows:(a) go-νbare construction arises out of the go-and-v pseudo-coordination construction, (b) Based on discussion within the constructionalization model by drawing on corpus data, it is shown that the arising time of go-νbare might be much later than the Middle English era as is claimed by previous scholars. (c) Constructional changes of go-and-v pseudo-coordination leads to the constructionalization of go-νbare, and the new construction is also subject to other constructional changes. (d) Major mechanism of the process includes both formal and semantical neonalysis, and repetition is a powerful motivation for change.The findings of this thesis are expected to shed some light upon the diachronic development of go-νbare construction and at the same time to demonstrate advantages of constructionalization model in accounting for language change.