Lingusitics 203: Handout
Week 3: October 9, 2002

From Paul J. Hopper and Elizabeth Closs Traugott
Grammaticalization, Chapter 4
CUP, 2nd revised ed. (in press)

Recently the fundamental importance of conceptual metonymy in language in general has been widely recognized. Indeed, there has been a major shift in thinking and it is coming to be increasingly recognized as "probably even more basic [than metaphor] to cognition" (Barcelona 2000: 4). As a cognitive process in which "one conceptual entity ... provides access to another conceptual entity ... within the same domain' (Kövecses and Radden 1998: 38), metonymy points to ("indexes") relations in contexts that include interdependent (morpho)syntactic constituents. In an utterance such as (19) the verb go invites the conversational inference that the subject arrived at a later time at the destination, and the purposive to, introducing a subordinate clause, invites the conversational inference that someone intended the marriage to occur: 

(19)	I was/am going to be married. (in the sense 'I was/am going for the 
	purpose of getting married')
However, this implicature can be canceled:
(20)	I was going/on my way to be married, but on the plane I changed my mind 
      	and decided to join the Army.

We hypothesize that the future meaning of be going to was derived by the semanticization of the dual inferences of later time indexed by go and purposive to, not from go alone. Indeed, we hypothesize that the inference from purposive to must have played a significant role in the grammaticalization of be going to given that the major syntactic change involved in the development of the auxiliary is the rebracketing of [[...be going] [to S]] as [...be going to V X] (Chapter 1.1). The progressive be-ing indexed activity in process, and so motivated the tendency for be going to to be interpreted as a purposive that was relevant to the reference time of the clause and likely to be imminent (see Bybee and Pagliuca 1987, Pérez 1990, who differ from the analysis presented here mainly in treating the change as a case of metaphorization). To appreciate the importance of the relationship between to and go, in the development of auxiliary be going to, consider the following possible early instance: 

(21)	Thys onhappy sowle...was goyng to be broughte into helle for the synne and 
	onleful [unlawful] lustys of her body.
	(1482, Monk of Evesham [OED go 47b])

This can be understood as an expression of motion in the context of the belief that after death the soul goes on a journey with the purpose of being rewarded or punished for actions in life. Note that in this example the passive demotes the inference that the subject of go is volitional or responsible with respect to the purposive clause. Because the destination of the journey (hell) is an adjunct not of goyng to but of broughte, the directionality of going is also demoted, and the inference of imminent future resulting from the purposes of the judges of the dead is promoted.

Similarly, in the passage in (22) the answer to whither away is (to) a messenger, and I am going to deliver them seems best understood as answering the question (why) so fast?, in other words, it seems more informative if it is inferred to answer the question in terms of purposes rather than directions:

(22)	Duke	Sir Valentine, whither away so fast?
	Val.	Please it your grace, there is a messenger
		That stays to bear my letters to my friends,
		And I am going to deliver them.
	(c. 1595, Shakespeare, Two Gentlemen of Verona III.i.51)

The full semanticization (and grammaticalization) of be going to is evidenced when the following subject and/or the verb is incompatible with purposiveness, for example, an inanimate subject or a verb of mental experience such as hear, or like. Once the semanticization of later time/future had occurred, the will future could no longer be used with be going to, presumably because it had become partially redundant, and did not fit the auxiliary verb structure into which the construction had been absorbed. (Note, however, that the will-future can still occur in the main verb construction be going to, as in I will be going to visit Aunt Mildred tomorrow.)

References
Barcelona, Antonio, ed. 2000. Metaphor and Metonymy at the Crossroads: A Cognitive Perspective. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
Bybee, Joan L., and William Pagliuca. 1985. Cross-linguistic comparison and the development of grammatical meaning. In Jacek Fisiak, ed., Historical Semantics, Historical Word-formation. 59-83. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
Kövecses, Zoltán and Günter Radden. 1998. Metonymy: developing a cognitive linguistic view. Cognitive Linguistics 9: 37-77.
Pérez, Aveline. 1990. Time in motion: grammaticalisation of the be going to construction in English. La Trobe University Working Papers in Linguistics 3: 49-64.

EXAMPLES FOM LAMPETER CORPUS (in ICAME)


22 going to ranging from years 1646 to 1723

5 examples of going to Placename:
1646
1652
1666
1688
1730
e.g. 1646 Legall Vindication Of the Liberties of England, Against ILLEGALL TAXES took a States Man of War ... going to Scarborough

4 other examples of going to NP
1649 going to the Lecture
1678 going to Church
1680 going to Law
1703 going to a Survey of Provisions

going to V
1658 Model for maintaining students of choice abilities at Universities
And now I offer it to your sober thoughts, as to men that are going to be accountable for their Talents,

1678 Trials of several persons
When they came home again, she asked for her Maid; and being told she was not within, she cried out, I pray God I be not robbed; and so going to look, they found they were indeed robbed, and so she pretended she was too.
...
The Prisoner said that another woman, with whom she was drinking a pot of drink, gave them her, and desired her to carry them for her to such a place; which she was going to do with the things in her Apron, but not telling the womans name,
...
Another Witness swore, that he met the Prisoner Smith in the morning of that day, when he said, he was going to buy Calves,

1680 Englishman's right
I am summon'd to appear upon a Jury, and was just going to try if I could get off. Now I doubt not but you can put me into the best way to obtain that favour.

1692 Second Part of the Notorious Imposter
And so without farther Ceremony she trips into the Boat with him, and so away to London. When he came there, and had fix'd her at her Old Lodgings, he desired her to have a little patience till his return from Lombard-street, where he was going to pay this Money: but before he went, giving her a kind Kiss or two. Lord, my Dear (says he) this plain Wedding-Ring upon thy Finger is too poor for My Wife! I am going to pay this Money to a Goldsmith, and prithee give me thy Ring along with me, and I'll put a Diamond into it.

1705 Remarks upon the Bank of England
which is one and the same Case, as to the Consequences I am going to draw, Namely, First That the Bank can set its own Rate of lending;

1712 Confutation of witchcraft
The Fit goes off in its due Course, and this is call'd an Exorcism. I do say, any one that sprinkles Water in a Person's Face that's going to swoon, has a better Claim to an Exorcist,

1715 Plea for divorce
My Lords, I have taken some Pains to understand this Matter, and what I am going to say I have from very good Authority, living as well as dead, for it is something out of the way of my Profession.

1716 Articles of impeachment
His Majesty's Commission is going to be read; your Lordships are desired to attend. All the Peers uncovered themselves, and they and all others stood up uncovered while the Commission was reading.

1720 Letter to member of Parliament about Naval store-bill
It is therefore proposed, That every Master-Weaver, Smith, or Comber, in the Plantaytions, shall be obliged to appear before the Governour of each Province, there to register his Name and Place of Abode, … but if he changes his Master, he shall be obliged to change the Register of his Place of Abode to that of the Person he is going to reside with.

1723 Order of House of Lords
he verily believes it was a mere Fiction of his own, and that there never was any such Club. That he Layer thinks Lord Orrery mentioned to him Lord Strafford as one of those who, with Lord North, Sir Harry Goring, and others, were (as Lord Orrery was informed) going to do a rash thing in favour of the Pretender;