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Other than the phrase

Go home.

I can't find other uses of go without to when talking about a specific destination/physical place.

I am going to California.

She went to Milan.

The other uses of go (go crazy, go shopping, and so on) shouldn't be taken into consideration here.

Community
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ielyamani
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  • Not when I'm going from California. – Hot Licks Feb 26 '17 at 13:49
  • @HotLicks that wouldn't be expressing a destination – ielyamani Feb 26 '17 at 13:50
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    No, but it does express a physical place. And you can also go toward California. – Hot Licks Feb 26 '17 at 13:51
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    And you can go somewhere, go West, go upstairs, go visit Milan etc. – Mr Lister Feb 26 '17 at 13:54
  • @MrLister somewhere isn't specific. – ielyamani Feb 26 '17 at 13:57
  • @HotLicks I've edited the question – ielyamani Feb 26 '17 at 14:27
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    Addressed at Why is this sentence wrong? ... He went to home. 'Go/come home' is an exception; note that come normally requires to also. – Edwin Ashworth Feb 26 '17 at 14:55
  • @EdwinAshworth I see, adverbial objectives could be used to express location/destination without the need for to. That'll do ! – ielyamani Feb 26 '17 at 15:04
  • No. I'm going into* California.* She went into* Milan.* – Arm the good guys in America Feb 26 '17 at 15:10
  • Yes @Clare , we've established to to express the action of going somewhere, you can use others prepositions, adverbial objectives, or other constructs mentioned by Mr.Lister – ielyamani Feb 26 '17 at 15:15
  • @EdwinAshworth Erm, probably not actually. Home, although it looks like its homohponouns noun counterpart is a preposition (or adverb if one really must). So come home and go home both have the preposition phrase home as a locative Adjunct. – Araucaria - Him Feb 26 '17 at 15:18
  • So which adverbial objectives other than home specify specific destinations? – Edwin Ashworth Feb 26 '17 at 15:19
  • @EdwinAshworth Is that last comment addressed to me? – Araucaria - Him Feb 26 '17 at 15:19
  • @Araucaria Erm, if one subscribes to the CGEL treatment. There are real problems with their super-lumping to include intransitive prepositions. 'Arriving early at the ferry docked at the roadside, we drove on.' / 'Home' in this usage is a relict of an inflected form of the noun and if anything is a prepositional phrase that has lost its preposition. 'Locative/directional particle' is as far as I'm prepared to go. – Edwin Ashworth Feb 26 '17 at 15:22
  • @EdwinAshworth some were listed by Mr Lister: go West/East, go upstairs, ... – ielyamani Feb 26 '17 at 15:24
  • @EdwinAshworth But home being analysed as an adverb is not very new or controversial. (Actually neither is intransitive prepositions. It's been mainstram for about 50 years, it's nothing special to H&P). [I don't get what point is being made in the example given, btw] – Araucaria - Him Feb 26 '17 at 15:24
  • No, west and east are directions not termini in 'go west'. 'The West', maybe, but then you'd need 'journey to the West'. Arguably, upstairs isn't totally specific as a destination either (one floor up or ten?) – Edwin Ashworth Feb 26 '17 at 15:26
  • @EdwinAshworth Touché, you're right. Currently the NSLinguisticTaggerin iOS can only categorize words being verbs/nouns/prepositions. So my workaround is this: lemmatize the sentence, look for go, then see if it's followed by a preposition. Dropping the preposition (if any) from the rest of the sentence gives us the destination – ielyamani Feb 26 '17 at 15:31
  • @Araucaria The analysis as intransitive preposition derives ultimately from obviously related parallel structures. 'He is in the/his house' and 'He is in'. But with 'Arriving early at the ferry docked at the roadside, we drove on.' it is not clear whether 'on' is a shortened form of 'onto the ferry' or not. – Edwin Ashworth Feb 26 '17 at 15:33
  • "OK, I've arrived at the house. What should I do next?" "Go in." – fixer1234 Feb 26 '17 at 21:08

3 Answers3

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The verb GO can be used with many prepositions, including the preposition home and the preposition to. When the verb GO indicates to travel, it usually takes a Locative Complement. This is usually in the form of a preposition phrase. The preposition phrase may consist just of an intransitive preposition (these are regarded by some traditional grammars as 'adverbs'), or it many consist of a preposition phrase taking another preposition phrase as Complement. It it may, of course, consist of a preposition taking a noun phrase as Complement:

  • He went north. (intransitive preposition)
  • He went out of the building. (preposition with preposition phrase complement)
  • He went into the shed. (preposition with noun phrase complement)

The Original Poster's question

The Original Poster asks if the verb GO is always followed by the preposition to when the sentence mentions a specific location or destination. The answer is NO! Here are some examples:

  • He went inside the cinema.
  • He went aboard the ship.
  • He went into the maze.
Araucaria - Him
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  • So there would always be prepositions between the verb go and the destination? – ielyamani Feb 26 '17 at 17:11
  • @Carpsen90 Not exactly, because sometimes the preposition itself indicates the destination, so there may be no need for an extra, intervening preposition. Consider go home, go abroad, go away, go inside, go outside, go upstairs etc, etc. But if the destination is represented by a noun phrase, then yes, you do need an intervening preposition! – Araucaria - Him Feb 26 '17 at 17:14
  • For a computer to understand that we're talking about a destination, the sentence should either have this form: go, preposition, noun phrase; or go+ locative complement or adverbial objectives? – ielyamani Feb 26 '17 at 17:18
  • @Carpsen90 Well, a Locative Complement could be either: prep; prep + prep phrase; prep + noun. However, I think it'll be difficult to isolate all the genuine prep + noun locative adjuncts from other idiomatic uses of GO. Consider for example go on a bender, go round the bend and so on. – Araucaria - Him Feb 26 '17 at 17:22
  • @Carpsen90 So, to give an indication of the problem go round the bend could either be an idiom meaning go crazy or it could involve a Locative Complement. The only way of telling is from the context ... – Araucaria - Him Feb 26 '17 at 17:24
  • Yes I understand that part. What am trying to solve is parse a sentence entered by a user in natural language. and location could be expressed by many constructs, like: "Have a pizza with Jane at Freddy's" – ielyamani Feb 26 '17 at 17:25
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    Extracting the location expressed in a sentence, using different constructs, in different languages, is a wider problem that I'll have to deal with. Thank you for your input, I'll see what I can do. – ielyamani Feb 26 '17 at 17:35
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No. There are other propositions besides to, which can be used in conjunction with the main verb go, when specifying a place or destination. For example,

  • to go near the US Border wall
  • to go around a lake
  • to go between two trees
Mari-Lou A
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Carrara
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I think you are asking if to go needs to be followed by a preposition to indicate the targeted location, and I say ‘Yes, I think so’ because a place is localized, ideally to a point, whereas going is a transition between points. An official explanation would probably relate to transitivity [1].

Putting to in front of the identifier of the destination implies a path. To go home is likely not an exception, because home is also a verb (as in homing missile), whereas to go [verb] is common. Although, to go to ask stackexchange does not seem grammatically wrong to me. I'd suspect the infinitive has been dropped in favor of clear distinction between this construction used with places or activities. To prefer losing the infinitive seems to be an affinity of the English language, as evidenced by a clear preference for the gerund for example.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transitivity

Mari-Lou A
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Hector von Vector
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