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Go is an irregular verb. Along with be, go is one of only two verbs with a suppletive past tense in the English language.

Contents 1 Principal parts 2 Etymology 2.1 Origin of ēode 2.2 Development of a new preterite 2.3 Wendan and windan 2.4 Possible origins of the infinitive 2.5 Possible origins of the past participle 2.6 Summary of the main Proto-Indo-European roots 3 References

[edit] Principal parts

The principal parts of the word are go, went, gone. Otherwise the modern English verb conjugates regularly. The irregularity of the principal parts results from their disparate origin in definitely two but possibly three distinct Indo-European roots.

The preterite (simple past tense) is not etymologically related to go. Rather, went descends from a variant form of the preterite of wend, the descendant of Old English wendan and Middle English wenden. Old English wendan and gān (to go) shared semantic similarities. These similarities can be seen in the sentence "I'm wending my way home", which is equivalent in meaning to "I'm going home."

[edit] Etymology

Go descends from Middle English gon, from Old English gān, from Proto-Germanic *gē, from Proto-Indo-European *g̑ʰē- (“‘to release’”). Cognates in the Germanic languages include Dutch gaan, German gehen (from Old High German gān), Swedish gå, Icelandic gá (both from Old Norse gá).

[edit] Origin of ēode

Old English did not use any variation of went for the general preterite of go; instead, the word ēode was used, which lingers in the obsolete yede, yode and yead. In all its conjugated forms, ēode appears as a typical Germanic preterite with its dental suffixes. The root ēo came from the Proto-Germanic *ijjōm (the asterisk signifies that the form is unattested). Gothic employs this root in iddja. Apart from English and Gothic, no other Germanic language employs this root. *Ijjōm was a past tense form of the Proto-Indo-European (PIE) root *yā (go). Specifically, this root was either imperfect or aorist. (The aorist tense expressed momentary action in the past, while the imperfect, continual action in the past). *Yā may have come from ī, a PIE form of *ei, and if so, it would establish a cognate relationship between Old English ēode and Latin īre (to go, pres inf.), which is ī from *ei followed by a standard Latin infinitive ending. Īre is the source of many English words such as introit, preterite, and ambition. The OED does not discuss this, but the 4th Edition of the American Heritage Dictionary does in its appendix of PIE stems, drawing heavily on Julius Pokorny's Indogermanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch (page 293).

[edit] Development of a new preterite

In Middle English, ēode evolved into ȝede, yede, and yode. By the 15th century in southern England, wende (wend) had become synonymous with go, but its infinitive and present tense forms had ceased to be in frequent use. This was also true of the various ēode-derived preterites of go, thus a variant preterite of wend absorbed the function. After went became established as the preterite of go, wend took on a new preterite, wended. In Scotland and northern England, yede was gaed, regularly formed by suffixing -ed to a variant of go. Due to the influence of the region, southern English forms constitute the standard language of England, and so went is the standard English preterite. Spencer used yede to mean go with yode as its preterite form but as dialect.

[edit] Wendan and windan

Wend, the source of go's current preterite, came from Old English wendan. The Old English verb likely descends from the PIE root *wand, based on Germanic cognates, notably Gothic wandjan. This root is the preterite stem of windan.

The ultimate source of went is windan, which had wendan as a preterite stem. Windan is the source of the modern verb wind whose preterite and past participle is wound. The original preterite of windan was *wand-, and windan had a causative form, wendan (meaning "to cause to wind", or "to cause to become wound"). So, went is derived from wendan, which is derived from windan.

The Oxford English Dictionary's entry for wand states that the words wend, wind, wand, and wander all have a common PIE root, which is related to turning. It is noteworthy that wand originally meant a supple switch, not a stiff rod, and shares a root with whip. One IE root (found in Pokorny 3. *er- 1152.) is found in one of the American Heritage Dictionary's etymological indices under *wer-2. Though this root also carries with it the idea of turning, none of its English descendants are the words for which we are looking. Many turning-related words in English come from *wer-2 (Pokorny's *er-), for instance, wrist, wreath, writhe, wring, wrench, and worm. All that is certain, is that wind is derived from a PIE root similar to *wer-2.

The root *w- implied turning or motion, and was probably used both transitively and intransitively. Wend was originally the causative of wind and often intransitive. However, both words have been conflated for at least a thousand years due to their similarity. With this confusion, the words have influenced each others' developments. For much of their histories, wend and wind have had the sense of going, hence wend's eventually becoming synonymous with go. Wind's past tense is winded or wound.

[edit] Possible origins of the infinitive

PIE *yā- is the root of go. It had the sense of to release, to let go and to be released, and also to go but in the middle voice. From *yā, descend Old English gān (to go), Dutch gaan, German gehen and Swedish gå. The Dutch, German and Swedish cognate verbs also have irregular and possibly suppletive past forms, namely the preterite ging of Dutch and German, gick (from the same source) of Swedish, and the past participle gegangen of German. From Old English, the infinitive underwent predictable phonological and morphological changes. The phonological changes involve the rounding of ā /ɑː/ to /ɔː/ in Middle English, then raised to /oː/ during the Great Vowel Shift. Verbs in Modern English lost the -en or -n suffix of Middle English on their infinitive forms.

[edit] Possible origins of the past participle

Gone is related to the obsolete or Scottish verb gang. Gang means "to walk" or "to go" (as in Scots "I'll gang nae mair tae yon hoose!") and is possibly the source of the past participle gone. A cognate of gang is the source of German gegangen, the past participle of gehen (cognate with go). According to this theory, the preterite of a form of gang eventually became the past participle in English, as it did in German. The OED describes three possible theories about the relationship between gai-, the source of the present forms, and gang-:

• The two may have no etymological connection, but have adopted similar form because of their similar meanings.
• Gang- may be a nasalized reduplication of gai-.
• The shorter gai- may have been derived from gang- by analogy with stai- from stand- (both related to English stand).

Other theories involve a link between the Germanic forms and similar words in other Indo-European languages, but these theories have not attained general acceptance by linguists.

[edit] Summary of the main Proto-Indo-European roots

Go is historically derived from at least three Proto-Indo-European roots: *ghê, the source of go and maybe gone; *ei and ī, the source of ēode; and a root beginning *w-, the source of went from wendan from windan. All three roots are continuely used in the standard English derivatives go, gone and went.

[edit] References

• The Online Etymology Dictionary
• The Oxford English Dictionary
• The Indogermanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch
• The American Heritage Dictionary's PIE roots index.