Going-to Future - Origin

Origin

The going to future originated by the extension of the spatial sense of the verb 'go' to a temporal sense (a common change - the same phenomenon can be seen in the preposition before). The original construction involved physical movement with an intention, such as I am going to harvest the crop. The location later became unnecessary, and the expression was reinterpreted to represent a near future.

The colloquial form gonna is a relaxed pronunciation of going to. For example, "This is gonna be awesome!". Other variants in different forms of English are gon and a, thus, a phrase like "You're going to like it" could also be said as "You're gonna like it", "You gonna like it", "You 'gon like it" or even "You 'a like it". This now forms a clear separation of the locative and temporal senses of the expression: while "I am gonna swim" is syntactically similar, a sentence like "I am gonna the beach" is not.

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