Teacher Discussion Forums

A student of mine had confusion between usages of 'come' and 'go'.

Example:
We've been invited to a party. Let's call them and tell them we _____.

Her first answer was "are going", which opened a very nice can of worms.

More examples (implied context in {}):
I'm going to the movies. Are you coming {with me, to the movies}?
Q: Why aren't you here yet? A: I'm coming {to you}...

How do I best explain the differences in usage? My references so far haven't helped much.

Thanks for any help!

Maybe try putting things into direct speech:

A: Hey I'm having a party this weekend - do you wanna come?
B: Sure!

(later)

B: ...so, I'll call A and tell him we're coming(/going).
C: OK.
B: Hello, A? We're definitely coming (?We're going) on Saturday.

(later still)

D: Are you going(/coming) to the party on Saturday?
B&C: Yes!

I imagine that 'come' is generally more frequent (useful in invitations), and D could have construed the party as something to which he was already going/invited, and used 'coming' instead.

GO is used more as in: I'm going to a party on Saturday > I went to a good party on Saturday.

Of course, there will be some overlap in natural (non-gap fill/exercise) text, but I don't think it would hurt the students to see whole conversations using nothing but 'come' (like above), then whole conversations using nothing but go>went.

As for the cinema context, I see it all as coming down to 'Let's go!', and even then, the operational verb might more be(come) 'see' (Hey, d'ya fancy (going to see>) seeing/wanna see X (with me) tonight?) . The phrasings you've got are a little strange/literal...it's not worth pulling hair out over because the physical movement to the desired location is incidental really to what will happen once there. Basically, if a student is getting neurotic over a point of usage, get them to make a detour around it by rephrasing/relexicalizing so that the functional end is still met, then leave the tricky word until it seems needed (or better still, naturally crops up/occurs again later, hopefully in a somewhat dissimilar context).

If the student still isn't satisfied, they could perhaps study concordance lines (or make/keep concordances themselves) and build up a picture of the most common phrasings from the patterns of collocates (I myself sometimes make a tally of the most frequent collocates in each space before and after the node/focus word (e.g. forms of the lemma COME), and then see if I can construct a sentence using only the most frequent collocate from each node +/- (n) spaces from the node and/or until the initial S(VO) word (order) seems suitable/usable). It may not be very scientific, but it's one way of averaging out the lexicogrammatical choices that seem to be operating over a range of contexts.

After thinking about this for a bit, this sounds like a good explanation to me:

"come" is usually used in conjunction with "with" or "to" prepositional phrases involving either the speaker or the listener. "Are you coming {with me} to dinner?" What is complicated is that the prepositional objects may be implied by context, and therefore omitted. "go" is used in most other situations.

This covers what I see as typical usage. Any counterexamples?

'Are you coming (with me) to dinner?' sounds unnatural to me. I think you're getting hung up on the phrase that's (apparently) omitted whilst overlooking the use of the progressive 'coming' (versus simple 'Do you want to...', which assumes nothing), and the variety of phrases that could complete 'Do you want to...' (have dinner, go out for dinner, come to Gino's with me/us/them, try that new Mexican place near the station etc etc).

I see it as, if you want sombody to go (or perhaps sometimes, to come) with you somewhere, you'll need to ask 'Do you want to/fancy -ing...' (and the 'with me' can indeed often be omitted; if there's any doubt about with whom, then the invitee can ask). This 'invitation to go' would be in contrast to invitations to come and visit or stay at your home, for example.

I've alluded to questions from a third party in my previous post ('Are you going to THE/Kev's dinner(/)party?').

Just a thought, it seems to me one would use the point of reference as the basis of whether one is coming or going. I would ask you if you are coming to my party, but I would ask if you are going to some other place or party. Does this make sense?

Hi Maggie, sorry for not replying for a while (I only just spotted/remembered this thread again).

Yup, what you've said makes sense to me, and is sort of what I myself was trying to say in my first post above.