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Can I say the following sentence in English?

I’m going to go to vote.

“Vote” is a verb here.

apaderno
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Mira
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  • I'm going to go for voting. – VijayaRagavan Oct 25 '13 at 08:30
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    @VijayaRagavan: not really; that doesn't sound natural. – Steve Melnikoff Oct 25 '13 at 10:18
  • I agree with Steve. – Tristan Oct 25 '13 at 14:48
  • It makes sense, but the "to go" seems unnecessary. – Charlie Harding Oct 25 '13 at 13:17
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    It would be nice if you added some clarification about why you asked this question. Of course you can say "I'm going to go to vote." You can also say, "The Klingons are farthing to wax." Whether it's grammatical, or interpretable, or is the best way to say what you're wanting to say – that's another matter. I suspect you're wondering if your your sentence violates some grammatical rule, but it would be helpful if you elaborated more on that. – J.R. Oct 25 '13 at 17:53
  • Well,a friend of mine said this.We aren´t native speakers,it sounded strange to me but I couldn´t find anything wrong.Now I see it´s correct.Thanks! – Mira Oct 27 '13 at 04:37

1 Answers1

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Yes, you can.

I'm going1 to go2 to vote.

The two gos indicate different things:

  1. Going to indicates future time, like will.
  2. Go is a verb of movement; you will go somewhere to vote.

So this sentence would be most appropriate if you're about to head out the door to go to your local voting site, and you want to tell someone the reason you're leaving.

Most verbs can be put together like the above (A to B to C to D). However, the verb of motion go is a special verb, and it can appear with another verb without to in-between:

I'm going1 to go2 vote.

This means the same thing as the above. This shorter sentence is more natural-sounding, particularly for American speakers; usually we leave out the to when we use go like this. (Some British English speakers regard this construction as an Americanism, and a few (particularly older) speakers don't accept it.)

I'm going1 to vote.

The simpler sentence "I'm going to vote" is different. It only has the future going to, not the verb of movement go. So it means "I will vote" (at some point in the future) and doesn't tell us that you're about to go somewhere to vote. This simpler sentence would be appropriate if you've decided in advance that you will vote. It can be said weeks or months in advance.

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    You might want to mention that the most natural-sounding version omits the second to: "I'm going to go vote." – Martha Oct 25 '13 at 14:14
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    The second example I'm going to go vote. is distinctive as American English. In the UK, the first and third examples would be much more likely. – Tristan Oct 25 '13 at 15:19
  • Martha, @Tristan, thank you both--I've updated my answer in response to both comments. (Tristan, I specifically wrote "some British English speakers, especially older speakers" based on the linguist Arnold Zwicky's characterization in this blog post about the "quasi-serial verb construction", which is what the second example uses.) –  Oct 25 '13 at 15:28
  • snail, I don't intend to give the impression that I do not accept that wording. I just mean that in the UK, I have not heard anyone use the word go, like it was used in the second example. They normally say things like go to or go and. I have only heard Americans use it like in your example. – Tristan Oct 25 '13 at 15:42
  • The last sentence can be parsed two ways: "I'm (going to) vote" - as in I will vote sometime in the future, OR "I'm going (to vote)" - as in, I'm leaving now to participate in the election. Context is the only way to disambiguate them. – Jim Oct 27 '13 at 01:42