A Study On Semantic, Pragmatic And Syntactic Features Of English Get-passive

The Get-passive, much studied by previous researchers has long been considered as a problematic construction and has aroused much interest from researchers. Based on the previous findings on the get-passive, this thesis tends to make an in-depth analysis on the get-passive from the perspectives of semantics, pragmatics and syntax and tries to give answers to the following three research questions with the help of the British National Corpus and Corpus of Contemporary American English:1) How to define the get-passive accurately?2) What are the semantic, pragmatic and syntactic features of the get-passive?3) What are the functions of the get-passive?Through all the analyses we arrive at the main conclusions on the get-passive as follows:1) From the literature review, we find that the previous definition of the get-passive is either too inclusive or too exclusive. After exploring the grammaticalization of the passive get and the nature of the passive get as well as its past participle, we put forward two criteria—affectedness on the subject of get+ven; and the dynamicity, to differentiate the get-passive from other get constructions.2) Events described in the get-passive are usually non-neutral ones (62.11%) compared to those in the be-passive; secondly, the subject of the get-passive is partially responsible for the event described; Thirdly, the get-passive is used more in the spoken register and used on informal occasion in BNC; fourthly, as to the get-passive, the subject of the passive should undergo some visible or physical change, which illustrates the fuller transitivity of the get-passive; fifthly, the get -passive is used to express a change or transition or a kind of effect experienced by its subject.3) Since the semantic and pragmatic features of the get-passive, the verbs in the get-passive show the following tendency: informal verbs; verbs with non-neutral meanings; while creation verbs, stative verbs and agentive verbs are seldom used.4) Syntactically, we find that the get-passive seldom has agents; similarly, the distribution of adverbs between get and the past participle is also rare compared with adverbials in the be-passive. In the get-passive, they are typically intensifying adverbials.5) Then based on previous findings on the features of the get-passive, we conclude the functions of the get-passive in Chapter Five. Firstly, ideational function—the subject of the get-passive is more emphasized and the agent is more subordinated. Secondly, interpersonal functions-performing actions: the get-passive can be used in imperatives to ask somebody else to perform some actions; stance-signaling function: the speaker denotes an emotional involvement or expresses a subjective attitude to the event or the patient while using the get-passive; emotional adaptation: since the stance-signaling function, the get-passive is also used to adapt to the emotion of the previous speaker.