🚀 go-pugleaf

> I think that this is a very impressive suggestion, and I have to agree 
> with it wholeheartedly.  My difficulty is in taking this generalization 
> and trying to find another good example of this.  For example, all that 
> is talked about here are buildings.  What about simple locations?  "I am 
> going to the beach" and "I am going to the park," unfortunately, fit more 
> into the second category as far as I can tell, since "the beach" and "the 
> park" are locales for activities, not particular places.  The distinction 
> above seems to make sense when we compare two sentences that are 
> identical except for the article "the":
> 
> I am going to the church.
> I am going to church.
> 
> The former implies the building, not the act of "praying," much in the 
> same way we can say "I am going to the office" and "I am going to work."  
> (For those who want to argue that "to work" is an infinitive as opposed 
> to "work" being a noun, how about "I am going to be at work" and "I am 
> going to be at the office"?)
> 
> I am running into trouble, then, because there are several circumstances 
> that do not allow for both, as in
> 
> "I am going to the beach"
> "I am going to beach"  (wrong)
> 
> Why?  Is "going to church" so idiomatic that we automatically think 
> "praying" while "going to beach" is just plain awkward?  And if the idoim 
> is what makes this rule hold, then I don't think we CAN generalize, can we?

I think another factor to consider is that these places are usually
attended regularly and with some level of compulsion:

I'm going to church
I'm going to school
I'm going to work
I'm going home

Church or temple is at the same time each week, school and work are
every day, and home is where we always return to after being anyplace
else.  There is also some level of compulsion associated with
attending church, school, and work as well as with going home on a
regular basis.

No one goes to the hospital that regularly unless they work there and
then they would say that they are going to work. Same goes for the
beach or the park.

Also interesting is that Brits will say that they are "in work" same
as Americans would say they are "in school".

Americans would say they are in college, but not in University as the
Brits do, but I think that has more to do with the difference in
meanings. To Americans a university is a collection of colleges. To
the British, a university is an institution of higher education that
focuses on academics, while a college is usually some kind of a trade
school. Granted, British a university is also a collection of
colleges, but it seems very important to them to reserve the term
college for the polytechnics and trade schools.

I graduated from a university, but would have no objections to someone
saying that I went to college. In my experiences with the British, the
question "Did you go to college" posed to an Oxford grad would be
quickly corrected with "No, I went to university."



Susan R. Hagan                          shagan@gandalf.rutgers.edu
Rutgers University Computing Services         Voice (908) 445-2425
P.O. Box 879, Piscataway, NJ  08855             Fax (908) 445-2021