Abstract
Work on Construction Grammar and Diachronic Construction Grammar has foregrounded the idea that constructions are organized as a network of interconnected form-meaning pairs. This article explores the history of the construction exemplified in the title, henceforth referred to as the Expeditionary Go construction, and its relation both to other members of the small family of English go-constructions and to the prepositional be-progressive (e.g., 1700, They were a hunting). The analysis traces the development of expeditionary go since Old English times and argues that it was a device conveying the Subject’s remoteness from the speaker-oriented deictic centre. This function has remained basically unchanged over the course of the history of English, but the form of expeditionary clauses has been adjusted as a result of profound language-internal and language-external developments; these developments have brought expeditionary clauses and other members of the network of go-constructions, most especially admonitive clauses (Don’t go peeping like that!), closer together.
Acknowledgements
This research was supported by the Spanish State Research Agency (grant number PID2020-114604GB-100) and the Consellería de Cultura, Educación e Universidade of the Regional Government of Galicia (grant number ED431B 2020/01). I would like to thank the editor of the journal and two anonymous reviewers for their insightful and constructive comments. Thanks are also due to Javier Martín-Arista for granting me access to Nerthus Lexical Database of Old English.
Appendix: A sample of gerunds attested in expeditionary collocations
i. LModE (1710–1920):
airing ‘walking or riding outdoors to take air or exercise’; bathing ‘the exposing of oneself or others to the free action of water’; bird-nesting ‘the activity or pastime of searching for birds’ nests’; boating ‘the action of rowing or sailing in boats as a sport or form of recreation’; buccaneering ‘the occupation of a buccaneer, piracy’; calling ‘visiting or paying a call’; cock-watching; cubbing ‘hunting young foxes’; district-visiting; electioneering ‘the practice of managing elections’; excursioning ‘going on an excursion’; haddock-fishing; heiress-hunting; license-hunting; marauding ‘making a raid for the purpose of plundering’; nutting ‘the action of gathering nuts’; punting; sightseeing; soldiering ‘the action of serving as a soldier’; tobogganing ‘the activity or pastime of riding a toboggan’.
ii. PDE (1975–1994)
abseiling ‘the action of descending a rock face using a rope’; babysitting; bilberrying ‘gathering bilberries’; bonefishing ‘fishing for bonefish’; campaigning ‘the conducting of a political campaign’; canvassing ‘the action of soliciting votes or support previously to an election’; caravaning ‘the activity of spending a holiday in a caravan’; ceilidhing ‘(in Scotland and Ireland) going on an evening visit’; hacking ‘riding a horse, typically in the countryside, for exercise or pleasure’; heli-skiing ‘the action of skiing down high mountain terrain, having been flown up by helicopter’; hitchhiking; jogging; joyriding; mousing ‘the action of hunting or catching mice’; mushrooming ‘the action of gathering mushrooms’; rabbiting ‘the action of hunting, shooting, or catching rabbits’; rockpooling; skiing; snorkelling; trolling ‘fishing by the method of trolling’.
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