Go figure

Andrew Patterson · Post by **Andrew Patterson** » Sat Apr 17, 2004 4:09 pm

Could I ask any Americans out there to give me as many examples of verbs followed by the bare infinitive as they can that aren't modal verbs.

I say Americans because these are mainly American expressions.

These seem to be formed by deletion of "and" in and-clauses.

"Go figure!" is one example, presumably short for,
"Go and figure it out yourself!"

I need these for my Venn diagram.

Thanks.

Stephen Jones · Post by **Stephen Jones** » Sat Apr 17, 2004 5:56 pm

"Go figure!" is an exclamation of surprise. The British equivalent would be "Fancy that!"

Harzer · Post by **Harzer** » Thu Apr 29, 2004 9:56 pm

Frank Sinatra: come fly with me.

I think your Venn diagram will be a very small one. I am not American, admittedly, but no other examples spring to mind.

Harzer

Stephen Jones · Post by **Stephen Jones** » Fri Apr 30, 2004 1:58 pm

"Go tell it on the mountain"

wjserson · Post by **wjserson** » Fri Apr 30, 2004 3:06 pm

"Go fetch!"

Lorikeet · Post by **Lorikeet** » Fri Apr 30, 2004 3:09 pm

It seems all of these examples are with "go" or "come." Were you looking for verbs other than these two, or more examples with these two? If I had a list, I'd go get it now.

.

Sally Olsen · Post by **Sally Olsen** » Fri Apr 30, 2004 3:47 pm

"Go figure" comes from Yiddish Gey vays "Go know". Leo Rosten,
in The Joys of Yinglish (Penguin, 1989, ISBN 0-452-26534-6), says:
"In English, one says, 'Go and see [look, ask, tell]...' Using an
imperative without any link to a conjunction is pure Yiddish, no
doubt derived from the biblical phrase, translated literally:
'Go tell...' 'Go praise the Lord...' (In English this becomes
'Come, let us praise the Lord.')"
http://alt-usage-english.org/excerpts/fxgofigu.html

Andrew Patterson · Post by **Andrew Patterson** » Fri Apr 30, 2004 9:10 pm

Thanks everyone for the examples,

It certainly seems that "come" and "go" are very productive, but others do exist apart from the modal verbs: Dare say, "Let go" and Make do" are the only instances where "Dare", "Let" and "Make" can be followed by the bare infinitive without an object. But at least there they can.

"Help" can always be followed by the imperative. eg "Help lift this."

Slam-dunk is slightly different, both slam and dunk are verbs, but together they originally formed a single noun - a slam-dunk. The noun was later used as a verb meaning to perform a slam-dunk. The past and past participle is slam-dunked. Again, slam does not appear to carry modality which is not surprising considering that the noun from which the verb was derrived was effectively a single lexical unit. The verb is likewise a single lexical unit. So is only a dubious member of this class.

Keep the examples coming everyone,

Laurie, I'm mostly looking for new verbs that can be followed by the bare infinitive, but I don't mind more examples of "come" and "go", I liked your little joke by the way.

Also, it is interesting to speculate whether such verbs might aquire modality over time. Anyone got any ideas on this?

Ed · Post by Ed » Fri Apr 30, 2004 9:54 pm

Andrew,

I don't know whether this is relevant or not, but I was trying to find Spanish equivalents for the examples with "come" and "go", and they seem to express purpose, as in "Come here in order to..."
I'll analyze them a bit more and get back to you if I find anything interesting.

Best,

Ed