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Two sentences:
We should go see a movie. (1)
*We should have gone see a movie. (2)
The first is correct, the second is incorrect. Why can we omit the word 'to' in the first but not the second?
A simpler example is this: You can say "We go see the movie," but not "We went see the movie."
I am not asking about the meanings of these sentences. I know what they mean. I'm asking why it is possible to omit the word 'to' when 'go' is in the present tense, but not in the past.
Great question. This construction, sometimes called a serial verb construction, mainly works for "go" and "come" (at least in conversational mainstream American English; some other dialects/languages use serial verbs more widely).
It is often used in the imperative, and can be paraphrased by adding "and":
It can also be used to talk about potential future activities (We should go see a movie or Let's go see a movie). It seems not to work as easily in the past or present (unless "do" is used):
More examples here.
The former sounds correct in spoken English, although sounds American to my British ear (i.e., the construction "go see" sounds American). The latter sounds unnatural, although could be rendered "We should have gone to see a movie" or "We should have gone and seen a movie" and then sound natural.
In formal written English, the former sentence should really have 'to' or 'and' before the verb 'see'. I have no evidence for this, but I believe that the commonality of the construction 'go to [verb]' has led in (primarily American) English to the omission of the word 'to'. My guess is that, since other tenses of the construction (e.g., 'have gone to [verb]' or 'went to [verb]'), while still grammatical, are less common, the omission of 'to' sounds odd.
The plot thickens: To my great surprise, I found myself uttering the following spontaneous phrase to my (BrE) wife last night: "Why don't you go brush your teeth?" Later, I asked her what she thought of the phrase "Let's go see a film" (I said 'film' rather than 'movie' so as not to prejudice her), and she also thought it sounded a bit American. But I think it actually might be that we don't 'see films' in the UK; rather, we 'watch films'. So perhaps the construction 'go see' is not the Americanism, but the phrase 'see a (movie/film)'.
The full phrasing, without leaving out any words, has an infinitive form:
We should go to see a movie.
Leaving out "to" and just using the verb "see" is OK, but it is chopped phrasing. If you want brevity, leave out both "to" and "go":
We should see a movie. We should watch a play. We should eat dinner.
All of these can be filled out, unnecessarily, with "go to do" or "go do" phrasing:
We should go eat dinner. We should go to watch a play.
For something (not) done in the past, you can use the phrase "have gone" and use the full infinitive -- if you are emphasizing the "going" action -- or just use past tense:
We should have gone to see the play. We should have gone to play tennis.
We should have seen the play. We should have played tennis.
The use of "go" in all its forms in these sentences is really unnecessary, but common. It puts an emphasis on (or at least includes) the movement or travel part of the action of the sentence, rather than just the ultimate action -- see, eat, watch, play.
I have been thinking about this issue since you posted it yesterday, and in particular I've been thinking about why, something I don't see other answers addressing (yet). Keep in mind that linguistics is a science, and as such needs to explain what we observe, so flatly saying "this is wrong" doesn't cut the mustard.
That said, natives seem to agree that "we should have gone see a movie" is worse than "we should go see a movie". And the latter does not work in all varieties of English. So we need an explanation for why this is.
The best explanation I can think of is this: There are the verbs come/go which may conjugate, and have participles etc, like many other verbs. Separately, there are also the verbs come/go which are always infinitive (either bare infinitives or to-infinitives) and which are subject to serialisation. This second pair of verbs are homonymous with the first pair, but they are not the same words, since they have different syntactic properties.
Others have posted before me, saying that the construction sounds distinctly American. I would agree with that assessment. I could hazard a guess that these verbs are more common in the New World because of influence from African or maybe Asian languages (these areas have languages where serial verbs are much more common), but I'm not sure of this. Wikipedia claims it's survived from Early Modern English, but does not cite a source.
I think this is related to the much-debated question: Does society influence language or language influence society?
I think what you are witnessing at the former sentence is "society influencing language" as native English speakers tend to use it in their daily conversations, more of an informal usage. So it sounds grammatically wrong to a new learner, maybe sounded wrong to a native speaker years ago.
On the other hand, the latter also sounds grammatically wrong to a new learner. And this time, it sounds strange or even wrong to say it in daily conversations. As a result, it is not approved.
In conclusion, society altered present but not the past or future :)
The former should be "go to see", or slightly less formally "go and see". Colloquial American English often omits both. You won't often hear this in Britain though, except as influenced by American phrasing picked up from films/TV/internet, but Brits will understand it well enough.
And with that in mind, Brits will understand the latter equally well too.
Neither is truly correct English grammar though, in either American or standard English.
