Go-V vs. go-and-V in English: A case of constructional synonymy?

The present paper deals with the double verb patterns go-and-V and go-V. While generative approaches have argued that the latter are truncated surface forms derived from the former, the present paper adds to the empirical evidence obtained so far, arguing in favor of the view that the two patterns be adequately conceived of as separate constructions (the notion of construction being defined in terms of construction grammar). On the basis of a large-scale corpus sample, statistical significance tests such as collostructional analysis and distinctive-collexemes analysis confirm that go-V and go-and-V differ substantially in terms of the (aktionsart of the) verbs they attract; moreover, calculating the collexemic overlap between the two constructions, we find that the overlap of verbs shared between the two constructions is significantly smaller than would be expected according to a derivational view.