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The Verb ''to go'' is irregular, and is the only Suppletive verb in English apart from '' Be ''.


PRINCIPAL PARTS

The Principal Parts of the word ''go'' are ''go'', ''went'', and ''gone''. The Past Participle ''gone'' is not nearly as irregular as the Preterit , (or 'simple past tense'), ''went''; at least ''gone'' is related to the Infinitive ''go''. ''Went'', is in no way Etymologically related to ''go'', for ''Went'' comes from ''wendan'' in Old English , which is also the source of ''wend''. Old English ''wendan'' and ''gan'' (the latter of which means ''go'') did share Semantic similarities, and their similar meanings can be seen in the fact that the Sentence "I'm wending my way home", means "I'm going home."


TWO IRREGULAR PRETERITS

However, ''went'' is only the second irregular preterit that ''go'' has had throughout its history. According to the Oxford English Dictionary (OED), ''go'' originally existed only in the present stem; thus, all past forms, such as preterits or past participial forms are later additions or modifications. Before adopting ''went'' as a preterit, ''go'' (then ''gan'') used ''ēode''. The following table reproduces ''gan'' conjugated in preterit, using its first preterit, ''ēode''. Translated into Early Modern English, this table reads "I went; thou wentst; he went; we went; you (pl.) went; they went".


THE OLD ENGLISH PRETERIT



ORIGIN OF ''ēODE''

  • ''ijjôm''. (The Gothic form of this root is ''iddja'') ---''Ijjôm'' was itself a past tense form of the Proto-Indo-European ( PIE ) root ---''yâ'' (''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). ---''Yâ'' itself seems to have come from a PIE form ---''ei'', ''î'', and if this is correct, it would establish a link between the Old English Preterit for ''go'' and the Latin ''īre'' (''go'', pres inf.) (which is simply the ''î'' from ---''ei'', ''î'' followed by a standard Latin infinitive ending, –re). 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). (''īre'' is the source of many English words, words as disparate as ''introit'', ''preterit'', and ''ambition'').



DEVELOPMENT OF A NEW PRETERIT

Returning to the etymology of ''go'', our now-familiar ''ēode'' became, in ME, variously ''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. With a waning, morphing preterit tense (''yode''), ''go'' was ripe to receive a new preterit -- the preterit of ''wende'', the familiar ''went''. In Scotland and in the dialects of northern England, ''yede'' was also replaced, but by ''gaed'', which was produced by adding a regular dental suffix to the regional variant of ''go''. ''Went'' made it into Standard English because southern England was to become the politically, culturally and economically central region of England in modern British history. However, a writer of no less importance than Spencer used ''yede'' to mean ''go'' in some instances, with its preterit form of ''yode'' but this was dialectical.


ETYMOLOGY OF ''WEND''

  • ''wand''. This root would be the preterit stem of ''windan''. The relationship between ''windan'' and ''wendan'' needs to be briefly addressed.



''WINDAN'' AND ''WENDEN''<NOWIKI>'</NOWIKI>S RELATIONSHIP

  • ''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 itself derived from ''windan''. Let us now investigate the etymology of ''windan''.



ORIGINS OF ''WINDAN''

  • ''er-'' 1152.) is treated 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 do come from ---''wer-2'' (which Pokorny calls er-). For instance, we have ''wrist'', ''wreath'', ''writhe'', (all of which involve turning), ''wring'', ''wrench'', and ''worm'' are only the most obvious descendants of this root. So, all we can say is that ''wind'' is derived from a similar PIE root to ---''wer-2''.


  • ''w-'' presupposed turning or motion, and was probably used both transitively and intransitively. Though originally ''wend'' meant to cause to ''wind'' (and the winding often being done in an intransitive sense), due to the similarity of these two words, they have been confused for at least a thousand years, and have thus influenced each other's developments. For much of their histories, wend and wind have had the sense of going, and thus it is not surprising that wend eventually came to have the sense of ''go''.



ORIGINS OF THE INFINITIVE

  • Ghê-'' is the PIE root from which ''go'' comes. It had the sense of "To release, let go; to be released; to go (but in the Middle Voice ). From ''---ghê'', comes Old English ''gân'' (to go) and German ''gehen'' (which is ''relatively'' regular, compared to English ''go''). Though the 1st person present indicative for ''go'' in Old English was ''gá'', aside from an unsurprising shift from an a to an o, there has been little change in the infinitive form of this word for its entire history. It is rare for such a common word to undergo so few changes over such a long history.



ORIGINS OF THE PAST PARTICIPLE

''Gone'' is closely related the now obsolete verb, ''gang''. Gang means "to walk" or "to go", and is possibly the source of the past participles ''gone'' and German ''gegangen'' (which also means ''gone''). According to this theory, the preterit of a form of ''gang'' eventually became past participles in English, German, and other related languages. The question arises of the relationship between ''gai-'', the form responsible for present forms, and ''gang-''. The OED describes three main theories:
  • The two have no etymological connection, but have become similar in form because of their similar meanings.

  • ''Gang-'' is a nasalized reduplication of ''gai-''.

  • The shorter ''gai-'' was created from ''gang-'' by analogy of ''stai-'' from ''stand-'' (the latter two relate to the verb "to stand").

    • Others have proposed a link between the Germanic forms and similar words in other Indo-European languages, but such theories have not attained general acceptance by the linguistic community.



SUMMARY OF THE MAIN PIE ROOTS

  • ''ghê'' (from which we get ''go'', and possibly ''gone''), ---''ei'', ''î'', the source of ''éonde'', and a root beginning in ---''w-'' from which we eventually get ''went'', through ''windan'' and then ''wendan''. We only use two of the derivatives of these roots today, ''go'' and ''went''.



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