The second construction, which we label for convenience the V Ving construction,
involves a motion verb followed by a verb in progressive form and a directional
complement. It is superficially similar to the motion construction discussed above and yet
has its own peculiar constraints. The directional is an argument of the main verb, not of
the second verb. In fact, unlike the usual paraphrase of motion predicates involving a
subordinate clause (illustrated in 33), the progressive verb in the V Ving construction
may not appear with its own arguments:
(32)
a. *Bill went whistling a tune down the street.
b. *Bill took off screaming at the thief toward the cops.
(33)
a. Bill went down the street whistling a tune.
b. Bill took off toward the cops screaming at the thief (all the while).
The main verb in the V Ving construction is not very productive. Acceptable examples
involve intransitive motion verbs with a very general meaning, namely come, go, run and
take off. With these verbs, the Ving slot is quite open:
(34)
Bill went singing/grinning/waving/laughing down the street.
Other intransitive motion verbs are unacceptable:
(34)
a. *Bill raced whistling down the street.
b. *Bill walked whistling down the street.
Transitive verbs take and bring are also acceptable to varying degrees, depending on the
choice of Ving:
(35) Bill took him kicking into the room.
(36) Bill brought him kicking and screaming into the room.
(37)?? Bill took him whistling into the room.
(38) ?? Bill brought him grinning into the room.
The progressive form of the complement bears its normal semantics such that the activity
described must be construed as obtaining over a period of time or as being iterative:
(39)A. Bill jumped off the bridge. ≠
b. Bill went jumping off the bridge.
While 39a is interpreted as a one time, telic action, 39b is necessarily interpreted as
iterative.
The syntax of the active construction appears to be analyzable either as [Subj [V Ving
PP]] or as [Subj [V [Ving PP]]]:
(40)Down the hill Bill took off screaming.
(41)Screaming down the hill Bill took off.
The second verb has an adverbial meaning and its distribution mirrors to some extent that
of adverbs.
(42)Down the hill the barrel rolled quickly.
(43)Quickly down the hill the barrel rolled.
However, adverbs and not V-ing forms can appear preverbally:
(44)The barrel quickly rolled down the hill.
(45)* Bill screaming went down the hill.
Given the fact that the directional is an argument of the main verb and not of the verb in
the progressive form, the syntactic analysis [Subj [V Ving PP]] is preferable, since it
allows the PP to be a sister of the main verb. [this doesn’t account for (41)—actually 41
isn’t great with simple “went” -AG] Thus the V +Ving construction appears to be a serial
verb construction of English, despite the fact that English does not allow serial verbs in
general. The V Ving construction represents a special form with its own special semantic
and syntactic constraints: a conventionalized construction that presumably must be
learned from the input the learner receives.
In fact a close look at the data reveals a family of serial verb constructions in English, just
as there exist a family of N-P-N constructions and ditransitive constructions. The V +
Ving construction is superficially similar to another conventionalized construction
exemplified in (46), which we may label the Go Ving construction. There are several
important reasons to distinguish the two constructions. Unlike the verbs in the V Ving
construction, go in the Go Ving construction is not interpreted as a motion verb and
therefore does not subcategorize for a directional. The direct object in (46) is a
complement of read not go:
(46) You shouldn’t go reading the newspaper all day.
Further differentiating the Go Ving construction from the V Ving construction formally,
the former only allows the main verb go, and it appears to prefer that go appear in
infinitival form:
(46)Pat’ll go telling Chris what to do, you’ll see.
(47)?Pat went telling Chris what to do.
The semantic properties of the two constructions also differ. Unlike the V Ving
construction, the Go Ving construction may refer to an instantaneous action:
(48)Don’t go spilling your drink!
(49)Don’t go jumping off the bridge now!
There is additionally a semantic constraint only associated with the Go Ving
construction: it implies that there is something negative about performing the action
designated by the complement. For example, (46) requires a context in which the speaker
disapproves of Pat’s telling Chris what to do.
Finally while the V + Ving construction is part of Standard English, the Go + Ving
construction is restricted to informal speech.
Before concluding this section on serial verbs in English, it must be noted that there is
still another distinct, although clearly related construction in which both verbs are in bare
form: the Go V construction. In this construction, go, come and run are all acceptable.
Unlike the Go Ving construction, the verbs in this construction retain their usual motion
interpretations:
(50) Go tell your sister to come here.
(51)Won’t you come sit with me?
(52)
She wanted her dog to go bring the paper.
Tensed forms of the verbs are unacceptable:
(53)
(54)
*She came sat/sit with me.
*He goes bring/brings the paper.
The negative implication associated with the Go Ving construction is absent from the Go
V construction:
(55) She had better go tell her what to do.
(56)
Go do your homework!
Thus we have described three separate serial verb constructions in English. Each must be
described on its own terms, with its particular syntactic and semantic constraints. It is
outside the scope of the present paper to detail the relationships among subconstructions,
but it is possible to capture generalizations across subconstructions via a default
inheritance hierarchy (Hudson 1984; Pollard and Sag 1987; Goldberg 1995; to appear;
Michaelis and Lambrecht 1996; Jackendoff XX, 2002).