Rethinking the Grammaticalization of Futurebe going to: A Corpus-based Approach

AbstractThe development of future be going to has been widely studied as an instance of grammaticalization. However, the present researches are limited to qualitative description and hence lack quantitative verification. This paper intends to conduct a corpus-based quantitative study on the grammaticalization of be going to to investigate the realization time of its full grammaticalization from (1) the application of mental verbs, (2) the appearance of non-animate subjects and (3) the use of passive voice in the corpus of Google Books and the diachronic distribution of be going to during the 200 years from the 1810s to 2000s in COHA. The findings include (1) the full grammaticalization of be going to is realized at the late 17th century, (2) the diachronic distribution of future be going to has been increasing compared with that of future will, and (3) future be going to belongs to the grammatical category of modal verbs.