Article published in:
English World-Wide
Vol. 38:2 (2017) ► pp. –

“Like getting nibbled to death by a duck”

Grammaticalization of the get-passive in the TIME Magazine Corpus

| Uppsala University
This large-scale corpus study explores new parameters which might indicate grammaticalization of the get-passive in recent American English, where the construction has increased in frequency. To this end, large samples of both be- and get-passives from the TIME Magazine Corpus were analyzed with regard to tense, aspect, and situation type (Aktionsart). While tense and aspect preferences of the passives were diachronically stable, the results of the situation-type analysis were of interest for two reasons. First, they showed clear differences in the way get- and be-passives are used which reflect the get-passive’s inchoative origins. And second, the diachronic analysis of situation-type preferences for get-passives provides a first indication that they may be further grammaticalizing as they begin to behave more like canonical be-passives in the most recent data. This finding is tentatively supported by supplementary data from COHA.
Keywords: get-passive, be-passive, grammaticalization, situation type, American English
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Material and method
    • 2.1The corpora
    • 2.2Retrieval
    • 2.3Finding central passives
  • 3.Results
    • 3.1Frequency of central passives based on proportions in collected data
    • 3.2Tense
    • 3.3Aspect
    • 3.4Situation type
  • 4.Discussion
    • 4.1Frequency
    • 4.2Tense and aspect
    • 4.3Situation type
    • 4.4Conclusion
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • Author queries
  • Sources
  • References
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