The verbs gaan and komen are also used as main verbs denoting movement, and blijven as a main verb denoting lack of movement; such main verbs are usually combined with a directional or locational complementive denoting a (new) location.

For what follows, it is important to note that examples like (204a&b) not only express that the logical subject Jan of the adpositional complementive undergoes a change of location, but also have certain implications concerning the location of the speaker and/or hearer. Let us assume that every discourse has a deictic center, which is usually taken by default to be the “here and now” of the speaker and/or hearer. An example such as (204a) with gaanto go then suggests that Amsterdam is not part of the deictic center, whereas examples such as (204b) with komento come suggest that it is. Examples such as (204c) with blijvento stay are usually neutral in this respect; Amsterdam may or may not be part of the deictic center.

The deictic center depends not only on the choice of verb, but also on the choice of subject. This can be seen in the examples in (205), which differ in the choice of the subject: first-person pronoun ikI versus second-person pronoun jeyou. In the (a)-examples Utrecht would normally be interpreted as not being part of the deictic center, whereas in the (b)-examples Utrecht would normally be interpreted as being part of the deictic center. However, the deictic center is taken to be the “here and now” of the addressee with the first-person subject pronoun, but the “here and now” of the speaker with the second-person subject pronoun.

Sometimes the deictic center can or must be determined on the basis of contextual information. In example (206a), the deictic center can be interpreted as the “here or now” of the speaker/addressee (the default interpretation), but also as the “here and now” of the subject Jan. Example (206b) cannot receive the default interpretation, but requires the deictic center to be interpreted as the “here and now” of Jan’s parents.

The spatial implications of the examples in (204) can also be present when gaanto go, komento come and blijvento stay take an infinitival complement. The acceptability judgments on the presence of the adverbial phrases daarthere and hierhere show that examples such as (207a) with gaan strongly prefer that the place where Jan will stay is not part of the deictic center, whereas examples such as (207b) with komen strongly prefer that it is; examples such as (207c) with blijven are again not sensitive to this effect.

The meaning of the verbs in (207) is not strictly locational, but also aspectual: the verbs gaan and komen express inchoative aspect, meaning that the eventuality denoted by the infinitive will be realized only after speech time; the verb blijven expresses continuative aspect, meaning that the eventuality denoted by the infinitive is ongoing at speech time. The examples in (208) further show that the verbs gaan and blijven can also have a purely aspectual meaning: example (208a) can be used when the speaker is already in bed and simply announces that he is going to sleep, and example (208c) with blijven does not imply that Jan will remain in the deictic center. Examples with a purely aspectual reading of komen are less easy to construct: e.g. (208b) strongly suggests that the speaker still has to join the addressee.

Since the aspectual verbs express inchoative/continuative aspect, we expect that they cannot be combined with stative predicates; the predicate must be dynamic in the sense of Verkuyl (1972/2005); cf. Section 1.2.3, sub II. This is illustrated by the contrast between the two examples in (209).

Things are not so simple, however, since it is easy to find examples such as (210b). Although it is not clear to us how to account for the contrast between the examples in (209) and (210), it is important to note that example (210b) gets a dynamic meaning: such examples are typically used when the speaker announces that something is going to happen that will make Jan angry.

The examples in (211a) show that all aspectual verbs can easily be used with verbs denoting activities; the constructions as a whole simply indicate that the activity will start/continue. While the inchoative verbs gaan and komen are perfectly acceptable with accomplishments, the continuative verb blijven triggers a special effect: the use of the dollar sign in (211b) indicates that this verb is only possible if the sentence allows a repetitive reading. Example (211c) shows that the verbs gaan and blijven are also compatible with achievement verbs, referring respectively to the beginning and the continuation of the process; the fact that komen leads to an unacceptable result may be due to the fact, discussed in Subsection I, that the lexical meaning of the corresponding main verb is difficult to suppress; cf. example (208b). Note that we have not tried to express the differences between the aspectual verbs in the translations.

The aspectual nature of the verbs gaan, komen and blijven predicts that the eventuality denoted by the bare infinitive must have an internal temporal structure. This means that verbs denoting instantaneous eventualities are expected to be impossible, but the actual situation seems more complex. For instance, the examples in (212) are possible, but produce a special effect: (212a) suggests that the eventuality has a temporal extension, and example (212b) gets a repetitive reading.

When a repetitive reading clashes with our knowledge of the world, as in (213a), the verb blijven produces an impossible result. However, it is very difficult to find cases in which gaan is excluded: examples such as (213b) are usually perfectly acceptable in a semelfactive reading, but seem to focus attention on the prelude to the event. The acceptability of (213b) thus suggests that it is generally possible for speakers to impose an internal temporal structure (prelude/beginning—main event—conclusion) on the events denoted by verbs of this type.

An alternative account for the acceptability of (213b) would be to claim that gaan is used here not as an aspectual but as a future auxiliary, but Subsection V will show that there is little evidence to support such a claim.

The reason for treating the aspectual verbs gaan, komen and blijven as non-main verbs is that there is no clear evidence to the contrary. First, we will see that these verbs are unaccusative and thus do not take an external argument; the subject of the clause is an argument of the bare infinitive. This implies that we are dealing with a kind of subject-raising construction, i.e. a structure like [NPi VASP [ti ... V]]. This can be supported by the examples in (214): the subject of the main clause in (214a) clearly functions as the external argument (subject) of the bare infinitival clause, since it is unclear how it could be semantically licensed by the aspectual verb, and example (214b) can have the same idiomatic reading of “to go bankrupt” as found in Die spaarbank valt omThat savings bank is collapsing.

Second, unlike in the case of modal verbs, it is not possible to pronominalize the bare infinitival complement of an aspectual verb. We start by considering the examples in (215), which show that aspectual verbs differ from deontic modal verbs in that they do not allow pronominalization of the bare infinitival clause.

Of course, the ungrammaticality of (215a') is to be expected, since the main verbs gaan, komen and blijven are monadic unaccusative verbs and thus allow at most one nominal argument. The examples in (216) show that it is very likely that the aspectual verbs are also unaccusative, because they take the perfect auxiliary zijn in the perfect.

We therefore expect that pronominalization would affect the bare infinitival complement together with the subject of the clause, as in the case of the epistemic modal verbs; the examples in (217) show that this expectation does not hold.

We can conclude that aspectual verbs do not take the bare infinitival clauses as internal argument, and are therefore by definition non-main verbs.

The impossibility of pronominalization illustrated in Subsection III implies that it is highly unlikely that the bare infinitives involved are nominalizations; the bare infinitives must therefore be verbal in nature. This is supported by the fact that the perfect-tense examples in (218) exhibit the IPP-effect.

It is difficult to provide adequate English translations of these examples; (218a&b) express that the emergence of the eventuality of swimming c.q. working has been completed (although the eventuality itself may still be in progress), while example (218c) suggests that the eventuality of visiting has been fully completed.

Haeseryn et al. (1997:976ff) claims that gaan can be used as a future auxiliary because an example such as (219a) is normally interpreted as referring to a future eventuality of raining. This claim seems untenable in view of the fact that gaan + infinitive constructions also occur in the perfect tense; the perfect-tense example in (219b) makes it crystal clear that gaan pertains only to the starting point of the eventuality, which is situated in the actualized part of the present-tense interval. The future interpretation of (219a) cannot therefore be attributed to the use of gaan, but reflects the fact that the simple present can locate eventualities in the non-actualized part of the present-tense interval; cf. Section 1.5.2 for a detailed discussion.

Haeseryn et al. (1997:978) further notes that there is a large number of more or less fixed expressions consisting of gaan + bare infinitive that seem to denote future events. These include the bare infinitives overstekento cross a street, promoverento take a doctoral degree, trouwento marry, van baan veranderenchange jobs, verhuizento move house. The fact that these collocations can also occur in the present perfect shows again that we are not dealing with future auxiliaries. In the examples in (220), it is not very clear what the semantic contribution of gaan is, but it seems that it emphasizes the processes that preceded the actual acts of marrying and getting a degree.

In short, the fact that the non-main verb gaan can be used in perfect-tense constructions and the fact that such constructions locate the starting point of the eventuality denoted by the main in the actualized part of the present-tense interval shows that gaan is not a future, but an ordinary aspectual auxiliary. The fact that present-tense constructions with gaan often refer to eventualities in the non-actualized part of the present-tense interval is not due to the verb gaan, but reflects a more general property of the present tense.

Subsection I has shown that the main verb counterparts of the aspectual verbs gaanto go, komento come and blijvento stay denote (lack of) movement, and that they typically take a locational or directional complementive; (221a) illustrates this again with an example in which the complementive has the form of the verbal particle uitout. The connotation of movement is not necessarily present in the aspectual use of these verbs: gaan in examples such as (221b) can simply express inchoative aspect.

This subsection examines the more special construction in (222a); the contrast with (222b) suggests that this construction is limited to the movement verb gaanto go. Before proceeding, we should mention that there is an apparently similar construction with zijnto be, which, at least at first glance seems to constitute a kind of in-between category; we will discuss this construction in Section 6.4.2, sub V.

The construction in (222a) typically refers to activities that take place in a place that is not part of the deictic center, which is typically taken to be the home or workplace of the referent of the subject of the sentence. The activities are usually pleasurable such as uit eten gaanto eat out, uit jagen gaanto go out hunting, uit dansen gaanto go out dancing and uit winkelen gaanto go out shopping. However, there are also cases like uit werken gaanto go out cleaning and somewhat obsolete expressions like uit koken/wassen gaanto go out cooking/washing for doing domestic work in other people’s homes.

The question we will investigate here is whether gaan functions as a main verb or as an aspectual verb in such constructions, and we will argue that the former is the case. A first observation that weighs against the analysis of gaan as a non-main verb in (222a) is that uit is not selected as a verbal particle (i.e. complementive) by the bare infinitive vissento fish, as is clear from the unacceptability of (223) with uit present. This seems to leave only one possibility, namely that uit is selected as a verbal particle by gaan, which would be surprising if it were a non-main verb.

A second observation that weighs against a non-main verb analysis of gaan is that the bare infinitive does not exhibit verbal behavior: example (224a') shows that the bare infinitive cannot follow the verb gaan, and example (224b') shows that it does not trigger the IPP-effect. The aspectual constructions in the primeless examples are added to illustrate the normal behavior of verbal bare infinitives.

Taken together, the two observations on (223) and (224) lead to the conclusion that gaan functions as a main verb in (222a). This raises the question of the function of the bare infinitive. An important observation is that in the primed examples in (224) the bare infinitive is placed between the verbal particle uit and the main verb gaan. The fact that verbal particles (i.e. complementives) are usually inseparable from the clause-final verb cluster suggests that the bare infinitive is part of the complementive. This is supported by the fact illustrated in (225a) that the sequence uit + bare infinitive can be placed in clause-initial position, and by the fact that this sequence can be used in the absolute met construction in (225b).

Further evidence for the claim that the sequence uit + bare infinitive is a constituent is that the infinitive must follow the particle; the examples in (226) show that the bare infinitive cannot be placed further left in the middle field of the clause, nor can it be placed in clause-initial position by wh-movement in topicalization constructions and questions.

In fact, the constituent consisting of the sequence uit + bare infinitive is completely opaque, as can be seen from the fact that internal arguments of the bare infinitive cannot escape this sequence either. This becomes especially clear when comparing the unacceptable example in (227b) with the perfectly acceptable aspectual construction Wat ging de kat vangen?What was the cat going to catch?.

Since example (223) has already shown that the particle uit is not selected by the verb vissento fish, the bare infinitive vissen in (222a) must be a complement or a modifier of the adposition uit. The latter option is the most likely for semantic reasons: the particle verb uitgaanto go out is typically used to express that the subject is engaged in some (outdoor) recreational activity, and the bare infinitive can therefore be seen as a modifier specifying this activity, which might explain the fact noted earlier that we are generally dealing with enjoyable activities. Since adjuncts (but not complements) are typically islands for extraction, assuming modifier status for the phrase headed by the bare infinitive may also explain the impossibility of movement in examples like (226) and (227).

The discussion above suggests that example (222a) has essentially the same clause structure as (221a); we have the main verb gaan selecting a complementive in the form of the verbal particle uit. The bare infinitive is not selected by the verb gaan, but acts as a modifier of the verbal particle. That we are not dealing with the aspectual non-main verb is supported by the fact that the lexical meaning of the main verb gaanto go can be suppressed in inchoative examples such as (221b), but not in examples such as (222a). The conclusions we have drawn above are tentative, as the syntactic behavior of the uit vissen gaan construction has received virtually no attention in the literature, in contrast to the seemingly related uit vissen zijn construction, which will be discussed in Section 6.4.2, sub V.