Signs of grammaticalization
Tracking the get-passive through COHA
In this study, I examine a large number of get-passives from different genres and time periods in the Corpus of Historical American English for signs of grammaticalization by looking for evidence of semantic bleaching and morphosyntactic generalization. A comparable set of be-passives is included as a control group throughout. The study shows a dramatic increase in the frequency of central get-passives between the 1870s and the 1990s. Changes in situation type, subject type, and range of past-participle collocates, which are traced through all four genres in the corpus, provide further indications that the get-passive is continuing to grammaticalize over the period.
Article outline
- 1.Introduction
- 1.1Aim and scope
- 1.2Grammaticalization and the get-passive
- 1.3Parameters investigated in the present study
- 2.Material and methods
- 2.1COHA
- 2.2Data selection and retrieval
- 2.3Classification of passives in the data sets
- 3.Results and discussion
- 3.1Diachronic frequency of central and semi-passives in COHA
- 3.2Situation type
- 3.3Subject type
- 3.4Frequent past participles in get- and be-passives
- 4.Conclusion
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Notes
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Sources
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References
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Appendix
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Journal of English Linguistics 47:3
► pp. 249 ff.
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