Page 143 - Costellazioni 6

GÜNTER RADDEN, Meaningful Grammar

2.2 The be going to-Future
In present-day English, the periphrastic be going to-construction has
two usages: as an intentional future, as in I am going to eat, and as an
conclusive future, as in There is going to be trouble. The development
and usages of these two senses of the be going to-Future pose a number
of challenges: (i) How are these senses related to the original spatial
sense of go? (ii) How are the two senses related to each other in pre-
sent-day English? (iii) How is the complex form be going to motivated
as a tense marker? We will look at these issues in turn.

(i) The use of the be going to-construction as a future marker is the
result of grammaticalization. In the process of their grammatical-
ization, words tend to undergo changes in form and/or meaning.
With respect to its form, Futurate /gəʊıŋ tu:/ is normally unstressed
and, unlike the lexical expression, may be contracted to /gɒnə/. With
respect to its meaning, the be going to-construction underwent sev-
eral stages of development from its original sense of movement to
the two future senses. These changes in meaning are illustrated in
the sentences below (adopted from Heine/Claudi/Hünnemeyer
1991: 70ff):

(6a) Henry is going to town.
= movement A
(6b) Are you going to the library?
= movement, implied intention A(b)
(6c) No, I am going to eat.
= (possibly movement), intention (A)b
(6d) I am going to make you happy.
= intention, implied prediction b(C)
(6e) It is going to be fun.
= conclusive prediction. C

Sentence (6a) indicates the basic sense of go: ‘movement’, here referred
to as sense ‘A’. When we go to a place, we normally do so with the
purpose of doing something there. Sentence (6b) thus invites the im-
plicature that I am going to the library in order to study there, i.e. sense
‘A(b)’, where the intention ‘b’ is optional.

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