The Spanish ir 'go' plus gerund (-ndo) construction varies synchronically between a more lexical meaning of  'movement in space while verb-ing', for example, van corriendo 'they go running', and a more grammatical meaning of 'gradually developing situation', for example, se va haciendo el negocio… poco a poco 'the business is growing... little by little (literally: goes growing).' This study compares Old Spanish texts (c.1200 – 1500) and present-day oral and written data. Diachronically, the ir + -ndo construction shows both formal reduction, as measured by intervening material and clitic climbing, and semantic reduction (generalization, bleaching), as measured by tense forms, subject types, and main verb classes. As expected (Bybee 1995, Bybee and Thompson 1997), concomitant with the grammaticization of ir + -ndo is an increase in token frequency.

However, the frequency of this construction relative to other auxiliary plus gerund constructions, in particular, estar 'be (located)' plus gerund, has declined. What is interesting is that decreased relative frequency corresponds to a slower pace of change for ir + -ndo than for estar + -ndo with respect to indices of both formal and semantic reduction. The results provide evidence that the pace of  reduction in grammaticization is constrained by the rate of frequency increases.

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