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There was a scene a thirty-something wife refuses to go looking for the wedding ring her husband lost in a courtyard when she was asked by her husband over the phone, in the fiction titled “The Lost Order” appearing in New Yorker magazine (January 7).

“I think I lost it when I was in the courtyard with Monkey [their pet dog]. I’m sorry to put this on you, but would you mind taking a look around for it?” - - -

“I’m not going to go look for it,”

I find myself saying into the phone. It’s not really a decision, it’s more like discovery.”

I noticed that there is no ‘to’ or ‘and’ used in “I’m not going to go look for it.”

Is it customary or grammatical not to bring ‘to+inf’ or 'and' after ‘go.’ Is it customary to say “go play baseball,” “go see movie” “go buy pumpkin” “go swim to the pool” or "go help someone."?

tchrist
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Yoichi Oishi
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    'Go play baseball' would be far more common than 'go play cricket'. In the UK, go catenates quite often with the to-infinitive, but more often with the 'and-infinitive': we have decided to go and play cricket on Thursday. In the US, go see a movie, go buy a pumpkin and go swim in the pool would be very common. – Edwin Ashworth Jan 09 '13 at 22:27
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    Yes, this is quite customary. In fact, it sounds awkward to say something like "I'm going to go to swim at the pool". It's a little bit better with "and" ("I'm going to go and swim at the pool"), but it sounds vastly more natural to leave out both. (And if you want to sound even closer to a native speaker, you pronounce "going to" as "gonna", so there's not even a "to" there.) – Marthaª Jan 09 '13 at 22:31
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    Yoichi, would you care to add an "american-english" or "british-english" tag, or even both, to indicate the point of view which should be addressed in any answer? There is a distinct transatlantic difference. – Andrew Leach Jan 09 '13 at 22:33
  • possible duplicate of Should I always insert "and" between two verbs in imperative mode? – tchrist Jan 09 '13 at 23:17
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    It's grammatical to say "I'm going to {go see a movie / go buy a pumpkin / go (swimming at / swim in) the pool / go help someone [CHOOSE ONE]". Most American native-speakers would add and after "go": "I'm going to {go and see a movie / go and buy a pumpkin go and help someone [CHOOSE ONE]". But I suspect that few would say "I'm going to go and swim in the pool". It's pleonastic to add "and" or "to", sounds terrible to me (unlike to most AmE speakers), & adds no value or meaning. But spoken English doesn't come with a style manual. –  Jan 09 '13 at 23:17
  • Also related: http://english.stackexchange.com/a/95032/2085 – tchrist Jan 09 '13 at 23:17
  • @Andrew Leach: Unless the OP has some special reason for wanting to restrict answers to the US or UK context, the fact that usages may differ is no good reason for flagging the question with either or both tags. Besides which, Yoichi himself might be ill-advised to focus on either of them here, considering he's got Australian Anglophones a lot closer to home! – FumbleFingers Jan 09 '13 at 23:44
  • @Bill: Are you saying that the addition of and (admittedly a rather illogical substitute for the infinitive marker to) or to itself is pleonastic and terrible-sounding between go and swim but not between go and see, go and buy, or go and help? Go followed by a bare infinitive is very unusual in the UK (though 'Go fly a kite!' has caught on). We do make liberal use of phase structures, where two verbs really convey a single or two intertwined 'actions': go swimming / go fishing / go dancing / go hiking / go riding / go playing football / come shopping / kneel praying. – Edwin Ashworth Jan 10 '13 at 20:19
  • @Edwin: Most of the time, adding the and does nothing but add an unnecessary word. Let's go see says the same thing to me as Let's go and see in one less word. I think of & use go see as a 2-word verb. One of the skills a technical editor must have is being able to cut unnecessary words to meet word-count restrictions in journal article abstracts & text. I'm a bit obsessive-compulsive about this point, I know, & out of step with the majority of native speakers. But, as I said, "spoken English doesn't come with a style manual". Brevity isn't always best, I know. –  Jan 10 '13 at 23:02

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This form is common in American English. The equivalent in standard English is "go verb-ing" or "go and verb".

Pitarou
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