{"status":"ok","message-type":"work","message-version":"1.0.0","message":{"indexed":{"date-parts":[[2026,7,24]],"date-time":"2026-07-24T18:02:35Z","timestamp":1784916155647,"version":"3.55.0"},"reference-count":49,"publisher":"Public Library of Science (PLoS)","issue":"7","license":[{"start":{"date-parts":[[2026,7,24]],"date-time":"2026-07-24T00:00:00Z","timestamp":1784851200000},"content-version":"vor","delay-in-days":0,"URL":"http:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by\/4.0\/"}],"funder":[{"DOI":"10.13039\/501100010224","name":"Philosophy and Social Science Foundation of Hunan Province","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","award":["21YBA074"],"award-info":[{"award-number":["21YBA074"]}],"id":[{"id":"10.13039\/501100010224","id-type":"DOI","asserted-by":"publisher"}]}],"content-domain":{"domain":["www.plosone.org"],"crossmark-restriction":false},"short-container-title":["PLoS One"],"abstract":"<jats:p>\n                    Through the quantification of frequency, existing corpus-based quantitative studies on grammaticalization offer a new direction for empirical investigation. However, most existing studies focus on general frequencies, failing to elucidate the relationship between frequency and grammaticalization. The proposition of critical frequency can reveal the relationship between frequency and grammaticalization and confirm the \u201cthreshold\u201d that triggers grammaticalization. The present study explores the critical frequency (i.e., synchronic intensity and diachronic thickness) of future\n                    <jats:italic>be going to<\/jats:italic>\n                    and clarifies the relationship between its critical frequency and general frequency based on the corpora of EEBO, Google Books and COCA. The corpora are large enough for tracing the development of the fully grammaticalized\n                    <jats:italic>be going to<\/jats:italic>\n                    . Furthermore, the results retrieved from them can be mutually verified, thereby ensuring the validity of the present study. Quantitative analyses, including Chi-square test and linear regression test, are performed on the retrieved results. The findings include: (1) the diachronic thickness of future\n                    <jats:italic>be going to<\/jats:italic>\n                    lasts for 110 years (i.e., 1580\u20131690) and the synchronic intensity amounts to 0.81 per million words; (2) The critical frequency and the general frequency of future\n                    <jats:italic>be going to<\/jats:italic>\n                    are closely correlated. The present study confirms the threshold for triggering the grammaticalization of future\n                    <jats:italic>be going to<\/jats:italic>\n                    and elucidates the relationship between its critical frequency and general frequency. This study provides insights for future quantitative research on grammaticalization.\n                  <\/jats:p>","DOI":"10.1371\/journal.pone.0352674","type":"journal-article","created":{"date-parts":[[2026,7,24]],"date-time":"2026-07-24T17:38:23Z","timestamp":1784914703000},"page":"e0352674","update-policy":"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1371\/journal.pone.corrections_policy","source":"Crossref","is-referenced-by-count":0,"title":["Revisiting the grammaticalization of future be going to: A corpus-based approach"],"prefix":"10.1371","volume":"21","author":[{"given":"Junhui","family":"Wu","sequence":"first","affiliation":[],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0009-0004-0822-8701","authenticated-orcid":true,"given":"Zerui","family":"Dai","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]}],"member":"340","published-online":{"date-parts":[[2026,7,24]]},"reference":[{"key":"pone.0352674.ref001","first-page":"49","article-title":"Time in motion: Grammaticalisation of the be going to construction in English","volume":"3","author":"A P\u00e9rez","year":"1990","journal-title":"La Trobe University Working Papers in Linguistics"},{"key":"pone.0352674.ref002","volume-title":"The evolution of grammar: tense, aspect, and modality in the languages of the world","author":"J Bybee","year":"1994"},{"issue":"3","key":"pone.0352674.ref003","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"315","DOI":"10.1017\/S0954394599113048","article-title":"The grammaticization of going to in (African American) English","volume":"11","author":"S Poplack","year":"1999","journal-title":"Lang Var Change"},{"key":"pone.0352674.ref004","volume-title":"An introduction to cognitive linguistics","author":"F Ungerer","year":"2006","edition":"2"},{"key":"pone.0352674.ref005","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","DOI":"10.1093\/oso\/9780199227761.001.0001","volume-title":"The genesis of grammar: A reconstruction","author":"B Heine","year":"2007"},{"key":"pone.0352674.ref006","first-page":"63","article-title":"The grammaticalization of \u201cBE going to\u201d","volume":"15","author":"S Disney","year":"2009","journal-title":"Newcastle Working Papers in Linguistics"},{"key":"pone.0352674.ref007","first-page":"130","article-title":"Grammaticalization and language acquisition","volume-title":"The Oxford handbook of grammaticalization","author":"H. 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