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    The empty verb hinnegean go selects an adjunct IPI
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    The verb hinnegean go developed in 19th and early twentieth-century Frisian into a kind of semi-auxiliary selecting adjunct Imperativus-pro-Infinitivo construction (IPIs). It does not seem to have any meaning anymore, it acts as a kind of empty verb. Two examples are given below:

    1
    a. Wêrom soest no net hinnegean en helje dyn skat?
    why would.2SG now not go and get your treasure
    Why wouldn't you go and get your treasure?
    b. Hy koe ek hinnegean en set in bakfol op 'e fyts
    he could also go and put a box.ful on the bike
    He could also go and load a box full of them on his bike
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    The verb hinnegean go is a separable verb consisting of the verb gean go and the verbal particle hinne to, away. This particle either occurs with or without a Noun Phrase (NP) complement. However, if it takes an NP complement, it must be an R-pronoun; otherwise the preposition naar to must be used. In the construction discussed here, hinne to does not select an argument. The verb hinnegean go almost always occurs in the form of an ordinary infinitive, as shown in (2):

    2
    Dan kin er doch net hinnegean en stegerje my ôf?
    then can he DcP not go and turn me down
    Then he surely cannot turn me down, can he?

    In case a tensed form of this verb is used, no IPI is found, presumably since a modal element is lacking. Instead, the tensed form of this verb triggers a conjunction with a tensed verb of which the subject has undergone gapping, as in the example below:

    3
    En de Israeliten gongen hinne en skriemden foar de Heare oan 'e jûn ta
    and the israelites went to and cried before the Lord until the evening till
    And the Israelites went and cried before the Lord until the evening

    There are not many of this type of example, and they mostly originate from the bible translation. However, the corpus has one example of an IPI cooccurring with the past tense of hinnegean go, with Bare Infinitival (BI) inflection:

    4
    Dy gongen hinne en stopje in âld broek en in âld jas fol strie
    they went to and fill.BI an old pants and an old coat full straw
    They went and filled an old pair of trousers and an old coat with straw

    To my ear, however, this sentence sounds ungrammatical. A grammatical example from the corpus is the following, featuring a tensed form of the verb hinnegean go inside a conditional clause, one in (5):

    5
    As wy no ris hinnegean en keapje fjouwer wat bihindiger stuollen
    if we now DcP to.go and buy four somewhat lighter chairs
    Suppose we go and buy four more manageable chairs

    It could be claimed, however, that the sentence above does not feature an IPI, but an asymmetric coordination containing a second conjunct featuring the present tense plural of the verb, which is homophonous to the bare infinitival (and imperative) form of the verb, as is characteristic for verbs belonging to the JE-declension. Asymmetric coordination involves the present of Verb-Second in a second conjunct embedded below the conditional complementiser. This claim is wrong, as can be shown by some tests. In the first place, if the sentence is put in the past tense, the verb of the adjunct IPI remains unchanged, as expected:

    6
    As wy no ris hinnegongen en keapje fjouwer wat bihindiger stuollen
    if we now DcP to.go.PT and buy four somewhat lighter chairs
    Suppose we go and buy four more manageable chairs

    If keapje buy were a tensed form, then it should be acceptable in the past tense, which it is not:

    7
    *As wy no ris hinnegongen en kochten fjouwer wat bihindiger stuollen
    if we now DcP to.go.PT and bought four somewhat lighter chairs
    Lit. Suppose we went and bought four more manageable chairs

    Secondly, the sentence cannot be analysed as an asymmetric coordination since asymmetric coordination does not allow the subject of the second conjunct to remain absent. The following pair of sentences shows that asymmetric coordination does not allow of subject gapping:

    8
    a. As hy te let is en hy hat gjin kaai by him
    if he too late is and he has.3SG no key with him
    If he is too late and he does not have a key with him
    b. ?*As hy te let is en hat gjin kaai by him
    if he too late is and has.3SG no key with him
    If he is too late and he does not have a key with him

    Therefore the absence of the subject indicates that a true IPI must be involved. This is reinforced, a 'third argument', by the grammaticality of the sentence below, in which the IPI displays a verb form which cannot be analysed as a plural tensed form of the verb:

    9
    As wy no ris hinnegean en skaf fjouwer wat bihindiger stuollen oan
    if we now DcP to.go and buy four somewhat lighter chairs P
    Suppose we go and purchase four more manageable chairs

    The adjunct IPI must occur in the direct scope of a modal verb, the non-finite complementiser om for or the conditional complementiser, which may point to the relevance of some semantic property comparable to nonveridicality and suchlike.

    References
      About this article
      Author(s): Eric Hoekstra
      Category: Frisian Syntax
      Keywords: adjunct IPI
      Version: 1.0, December 2015
      Version history:
      version editor(s) date remarks
      1.0 Eric Hoekstra December 2015
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