'Cheddar goes "good" with burgers?' Can "go" be seen as a verb of the senses?

Question

I know that the adverb modifies a verb except for in some limited cases such as verbs of the senses or copula.

"It tastes good.", not "It tastes well."

"It looks good.", not "It looks well."

"It seems good.", not "It seems well."

"It appears good.", not "It appears well."

Etc

However, I have noticed that at times it seems that go can substitute for some verbs of the senses such as in…

"That color goes good with your complexion." (looks)

"Cheddar cheese goes good with burgers." (tastes)

In spite of an answer to a similar question, I am not satisfied.

I did an Ngram search, and it appears that "well" is vastly preferred over "good"; however, Google.Books does seem to indicate that “good” has usage with go when discussing “looks” or “taste”, although it is not often seen in print.

I have searched through 3 pages of the 9th print edition of OALD, and cannot find support for the idea: however…

Can Go substitute for some verbs of the senses, and so take an adjective rather than an adverb?

Is there some kind of an explanation to describe the (mis)usage, or is just a matter of “correctness”?

Answer 1

sense verbs or sensory verbs are generally intransitive:

They are: look, seem, taste, feel, smell, and sound.

They all can be followed by adjectives.

You look good.
He sounds terrible.
That tastes scrumptious. [all adjectives]

the verb go is an action or active verb. Therefore, it needs an adverb:

• This wine goes well with that cheese.
• That color goes badly with your skin tone.
• That pictures goes horribly with this decor. [all adverbs]

So, this question is easily solved.

If someone says, "This wine goes good with that cheese." that marks the speaker as unschooled. I am sorry to say it but that is the way of the world, which I did not invent and which I am not judging by saying that.

do good and do well

good and well and mistakes

class pattern

This should satisfy the evidence hungry:

The class pattern is a typical sociolinguistic pattern – a characteristic type of social stratification - it results from the correlation of a particular linguistic variable with the non-linguistic variable of social class, i.e. socioeconomic status (usually in combination with speech style).

A formulation of the class pattern:

There is a relationship between social class membership (socioeconomic status) and the use of a particular speech variety in the form that:

The higher the socio-economic status, the higher is the frequency of using standard forms of speech (socially accepted and positively valued speech varieties or prestige varieties) and the lower is the frequency of using non-standard forms of speech (non-prestige varieties) in all styles of speech. The lower the socio-economic status, the lower is the frequency of using standard forms of speech (socially accepted and positively valued speech varieties) and the higher is the frequency of using non-standard forms of speech (non-prestige varieties) in all styles of speech.

[bolding mine]

"go good" is non-standard as per the text and grammar cited above, and "go well" is standard.

Answer 2

My initial response to this question was . . . "Ewwww. That's just incorrect. It should be well, not good."

Then, upon further reflection, I took your premise into account. Is the word go being used as a sensory verb here.

I do not believe it is. Rather I think this is merely informal usage of the word good, not the transmogrification of the word go into a sensory verb.

Notice that I am not saying incorrect usage, but rather informal usage. Frustrating as it may be, we have to allow for the fact that usage is what defines language. Much of what we consider correct today was probably informal usage a century (or even a decade) ago.

Answer 3

Due to the nature of how languages work, if enough people use this format (which is most certainly true) then it becomes grammatically acceptable. Sort of how '10 items or less' is equally as grammatically correct as '10 items or fewer.'

Answer 4

The question asked was:

Can Go substitute for some verbs of the senses, and so take an adjective rather than an adverb?

Sense verbs have several special properties. One of these is that they can take a bare infinitive clause with a subject in the oblique case if a pronoun. For example:

1. I saw him enter the house through the basement window.
2. I heard him tell them the story.

Go cannot be substituted there for those, so I wouldn’t say that go can ever be a “sense” verb like see or hear. But certainly there are many scenarios under which go can take an adjective as a complement.

Think of food that’s gone bad, for example, or gone putrid or whatnot. Those are adjectives. When food goes bad, even though it’s your senses that tell you this is its state, that still doesn’t make go a sense verb. (Oddly, I don’t think food can ever go good, only bad.)

The OED provides at least nine separate senses or subsenses in which go takes an adjective for a complement, but to go good with is not a licensed use, nor even a documented one. Here is a sampling of just a few of the OED’s zillions of citatations for some of these senses of go than can take an adjective complement:

• a1616 W. Shakespeare Tempest (1623) ɪᴠ. i. 241
  Wit shall not goe vn-rewarded while I am King of this Country.
• 1772 tr. J. A. Dumay Lett. to Mr. Kennicott 185
  The text of the Psalms went equal with your ancient manuscripts.
• 1875 Chem. News 28 May 233/1
  The milk went putrid after thirty-six hours.
• 1884 R. Buchanan Foxglove Manor III. xxxiii. 122
  Her cheeks went scarlet.
• 1889 Sat. Rev. 23 Nov. 589/2
  Marlborough was by no means unlikely to have gone Jacobite after all.
• 1891 Harper's Mag. Oct. 720/2
  Before us lay a sea of fern, gone a russet brown from decay.
• 1893 Sketch 15 Feb. 178/1
  The Government..are going very strong, as the rowing-man says.
• 1914 S. Lewis Our Mr. Wrenn v. 63
  We'll go Dutch.
• 1919 ‘K. Mansfield’ Let. 17 Oct. (1993) III. 29
  My eyes have gone all bloodshot.
• 1943 ‘C. Dickson’ She died Lady xix. 170
  Whatever else you do,..don't go psychoanalytic on me. I can't stand it.
• 1956 Life 2 Apr. 26/3
  The farm region of Center Creek township and the village of Granada..went Republican by 2–1 in 1954.
• 1960 Today 25 June 27
  Many a faithful servant goes completely unrecognised.
• 1961 P. Marshall Soul clap Hands & Sing (1962) 23
  Mr. Watford..felt the tendons which strung him together suddenly go limp.
• 1963 Sat. Evening Post 15 June 4/2
  Don't go too ‘arty’ on us.
• 1966 New Yorker 1 Oct. 183 (advt.)
  Then I write my letter accusing them of going establishment.
• 1969 H. A. Werner Iron Coffins i. 33
  The ocean went high, the wind swept hard.
• 1988 Changing Times Dec. 107
  As much as $4 billion..goes unpaid each year.
• 1996 Minx Nov. 143/3
  He went all James Dean on me.
• 2001 C. Glazebrook Madolescents 54
  I hope she's not going all vegetarian on me.
• 2001 J. Boyle Galloway Street 20
  His voice has gone quiet all of a sudden.
• 2005 Evening Standard (Standard Lite ed.) 31 Aug. 23/3
  His girth suggested he has not gone hungry.
• 2006 Edmonton (Alberta) Jrnl. (Nexis) 20 Jan. a6
  Part of the reason the riding bucked the provincial trend and went Liberal was because of the significant concentration of immigrants.
• 2007 N. J. Smelser Faces of Terrorism iv. 114
  The media themselves do not wish to go unread, unheard, or unwatched.

Answer 5

You can look at it from three different angles

The first-

Go is a Delexical verb, meaning -

de·lex·i·cal

/dēˈleksikəl/

adjective LINGUISTICS

(of a verb) having little or no meaning in its own right, for example take in take a photograph.

That is, it's a very "phrasy" verb.

here are just a few examples of how go is not to be taken literally

• an attempt or try -he had a go at the stamp business (though a noun)
• animal sounds - The cow goes moo.
• to give access : LEAD That door goes to the cellar
• to be in general or on an average cheap, as yachts go

examples (dictionary.com / Miriam Webster)

and so on... and so you could easily see why this verb might clad itself in different meanings.

The second -

Go might be considered sometimes as a Stative and or Dynamic verb (as all "sense" verbs are). Those are verbs that do not describe an action but rather a state (more similar in meaning to an adjective, though in a sentence structure they are the verb. easily noticeable for they can't be said in continuous tenses and they don't take an object(intransitive). as in one of the examples above - to give access : LEAD That door goes to the cellar. surely the door makes no such verb as to go, it simply describes the state of the door. All Stative Verbs belong to a bigger family called linking verbs,such as be,seem..., and therefore can and will be followed by an adjective(complement).

The third -

your example might simply be an elliptical sentences that originally used the phrase - go hand in hand with.

as in "That color goes hand in hand with your complexion." (looks)

go hand in hand Of two things, to accompany one another harmoniously. thefreedictionary.com

Answer 6

The sensory verbs you are talking about in your examples are not exactly intransitive as stated in other answers, but copular

"Cheddar cheese tastes good" is a copular construction by the criteria described in the link above, because it is taking an adjective and assigning it as a property to the subject.

In you example, if "go" works the same way, as a copula, then we should be able to say "Cheddar cheese goes good", meaning, in some way, "Cheddar cheese is good". I don't think I have ever heard this usage.

If we don't accept "Cheddar cheese goes good" as a copular construction, "Cheddar cheese goes good with burgers" must be a different usage. As others have pointed out, "Cheddar cheese goes well with burgers" is also correct and has the same meaning. So we should conclude that in "Cheddar cheese goes good with burgers", "goes" is an intransitive verb and not a copula like the other "sense verbs" in your example, and "good" is actually an adverb. "Good" as an adverb is a real usage, but it is nonstandard, as other answers have pointed out.

Answer 7

No

Ignoring the incorrect usage of 'good' in your examples, 'go' is not representing a sensory verb, rather it's a term of suitability. The full verb is to go well

To say that:

X goes [good/well] with Y.

Means X suits Y. They complement each other, work well together, or some other matching term. This can be sensory, if you are talking about looks or taste, but can also not be sensory. For example:

Bob and Shirley make a great couple. They balance each other's emotions and make up for each other's shortcomings. They go well together.

The above sentence has nothing to do with sensory perception, but still works.

Answer 8

I don't believe "go" is being used in your examples as a verb of the senses at all. The phrase being used is "go with", and it means the same as "pair with", or maybe "match" or "befit".

Understood this way, the phrase "goes good with" does not, uh, go good with standard rules of grammar.