Why go doesn't have two past participles

Authors

  • Joseph Hilferty

Keywords:

Been to, gone to, grammatical constructions, construction grammar, prepositional polysemy

Abstract

The present paper argues that traditionalist-inspired claims (e.g., Swan 1980) alleging that the past participle been (to) is in allomorphic alteration with gone (to) are unsubstantiated by the facrs. First, it is shown that gone to and been to are semantically distinct. Then, it is postulated that the preposition to is polysemous in the domain of space and that this polysemy accounts for its ability to collocare with been. Finally, it is suggested that, unlike gone to, been to belongs to un idiomatic grammatical construction which helps to explain the differences in distribution between the two expressions. Taken as a whole, these arguments strongly indicate that been (10) is categorized as an instance of be and not as un allomorph of go.

Published

02-07-2021

Issue

Section

Artículos