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    Selecting a bare infinitive
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    The copula gean go shares with bliuwe stay the property that it combines with a restricted set of bare infinitives: the four verbs of body posture. These are: sitte sit, stean stand, lizze lie and hingje hang. An example is given below:

    1
    Hy gong heal oer Martha hinne lizzen
    he went half over Martha POST lie
    He crawled halfway on top of Martha
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    The copula gean stay shares a property with bliuwe stay. Both auxiliaries select a restricted set of bare infinitives, namely the four verbs of body posture (sitte sit, stean stand, lizze lie and hingje hang, see copulas of quasi body posture and aspect for more details). We provide two examples in which the complement of gean go is headed by a verb of body posture:

    2
    a. Mei de oare manlju giet er yn 'e lijte fan 'e keet stean
    with the other men goes he in the lee of the shed stand
    With the other men, he went to stand in the lee of the shed
    b. Gerk mei de hûnekarre, dêr't wy efteroan hingjen gienen
    Gerk with the dog.car which we behind hang.GI go
    Gerk with the dogcart, which we would hang on from behind

    The verb hingje hang can be both intransitive and transitive, but it is only the intransitive verb which combines with the verb of going. The transitive verb does not combine with the verb of going:

    3
    a. Hy hinget de wask oan 'e line
    he hangs the washed.clothes on the line
    He hangs the wahshing on the clothesline
    b. ?*Hy giet de wask oan 'e line hingjen
    he hangs the washed.clothes on the line hang
    He is going to hang the washing on the clothesline

    The verb gean go does not combine with subjects which do not have an agentive role, such as inanimate subjects. This explains the following contrast:

    4
    a. *De wask giet oan 'e line hingjen
    the washed clothes go on the line hang
    The washing is going to hang on the line
    b. Epke giet oan 'e line hingjen
    Epke go on the line hang
    Epke is going to hang on the line

    Non-agentive subjects require the unaccusative copula of coming followed by a to-infinitive, as in the sentence below (see komme come for more details):

    5
    De wask komt oan 'e line te hingjen
    the washed clothes comes on the line to hang
    The washing is going on the line

    The bare infinitive takes the form of a gerund with the copula of going. An ordinary infinitive is not allowed:

    6
    *Gerk mei de hûnekarre, dêr't wy efteroan hingje gienen
    Gerk with the dog.car which we behind hang.OI go
    Gerk with the dogcart, which we would hang on from behind

    Gean go does not combine with any other bare infinitive apart from the four verbs of body posture, more specifically, it does not combine with some verbs which bliuwe stay combines with and which express permanence (non-change) of location:

    7
    a. ?*In staak fan it laach giet wenjen op 'e âlde Holdinga State ûnder Eanjum
    a branch of the lineage goes living at the old Holdinga manor below Eangjum
    Members of a branch of the lineage went to live at the ancient Holdinga manor south of Eangjum
    b. *Oars giet de auto yn de snie stykjen
    Otherwise goes the car in the snow stick
    Otherwise the car will get stuck in the snow

    The example with wenje live sounds better than the example with stykje stick. Indeed, even nineteenth-century literature occasionally features an example involving wenje live, as in the example below from the writer Waling Dykstra:

    8
    Dêr wol hja mei in faam yn stilte wenjen gean
    there wants she with a maid in quiet live go
    She wants to go and live there quietly with a maid

    The copula gean go is still grounded in a locative interpretation, although it may acquire an overtone of inchoative aspect. In Dutch, this copula is quite generally used for inchoative and future aspect. The locative aspect of gean go in Frisian is visible from the fact that it seems to be more frequently accompanied by a locative phrase than Dutch gaan go, and this correlates with its selectional restrictions, although it is not clear how exactly. Note that the selection restrictions of gean go and other auxiliary verbs are currently changing due to pressure from Dutch, so that spoken language and informal written language may feature violations of the system described here.

    Gean go, unlike bliuwe stay, does not combine with verbs which have been morphologically derived from the verbs of body posture mentioned above:

    9
    *De kâns op in buike giet bestean as de luchtdruk sakket
    the chance of a shower goes exist when the air pressure goes.down
    The possibility of a shower may arise when the air pressure goes down

    In general, gean go does not combine with the infinitive of verbs other than the ones mentioned above: the following are ungrammatical:

    10
    a. *It giet reinen
    it goes rain
    It will rain
    b. *Hy giet God oanroppen
    he goes God to.call
    He is going to invoke God

    Standard Frisian differs from Standard Dutch with respect to selectional restrictions on bare infinitives in the complements of the locational inchoative copula. So the word by word translation equivalents of the two sentences in (10) are grammatical in Dutch. The sentences above can be expressed in grammatical Frisian by choosing a different construction. So the advent of rain can be described by a specific idiom or by choosing a modal auxiliary:

    11
    a. It siket om rein
    it looks for rain
    It will probably rain
    b. It koe wol reine wolle
    it could DcP rain want
    It might well begin to rain
    c. It sil reine
    it shall rain
    It will rain

    The inchoative auxiliary begjinne begin can also be used:

    12
    Hy begjint God oan te roppen
    he begins God to to call
    He begins to call on God
    References
      About this article
      Author(s): Eric Hoekstra
      Category: Frisian Syntax
      Keywords: bare infinitiveverbs of body posture
      Version: 1.0, December 2015
      Version history:
      version editor(s) date remarks
      1.0 Eric Hoekstra December 2015
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