Why is this sentence wrong?
He went to home.
is it correct in this way?
He went home
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related Usage of “go to” vs “go” and Prepositions used with “Home”– Mari-Lou ACommented Mar 14, 2015 at 7:26
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Unfortunately, the possible duplicate is asking what are the differences, and the question is closed. Perhaps @Edwin Ashworth's answer would be more appropriate on this post and then we could say the former is a duplicate of this one.– Mari-Lou ACommented Mar 14, 2015 at 11:26
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2 Answers
Because "to go home" is an idiomatic expression with the adverb home. You can't change this expression and above all, you can't replace the adverb home by the noun home and say "to home". It is simply wrong.
See OALD, home adverb http://www.oxfordlearnersdictionaries.com/definition/english/home_3
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No; dictionaries don't address the root question of why 'to home' isn't used while 'to virtually anywhere else' is . The duplicate does. Commented Mar 14, 2015 at 9:57
The peculiar usage of home without the preposition 'to' [and 'to home' is unacceptable to most people] is explained by 'paco' at EnglishForums:
Many English nouns and noun phrases can be used as adverbs. They are called "adverbial objectives". From the standpoint of word order, an adverbial objective is put as if it were an objective of a verb, but actually it works as an adverbial modifier of the verb. This sort of construct comes from an Old English grammar rule that allowed the use accusative cases of nouns as adverbs.
For example, let's take an Old English sentence "He eode ham"[=He went home]. From the [traditional] view of current English the word "ham" [home] would be treated as an adverb but it was the accusative of the noun "ham" in Old English [corresponding to 'to {his} home' rather than just '{his} home' in present-day English}: ie the to is considered to be 'built into' the home where required; this is possibly the only noun this occurs with nowadays].
[amended, and the subsequent analyses of 'adverbial objectives' is not the only analysis possible]
Other directional adverbial objectives / other adverbials not taking 'to' (there aren't many) include:
He's gone some place. (colloquial)
He's gone somewhere.
When did you come here?
When will you go there?
answered Mar 14, 2015 at 12:08
