A Corpus-based Study On The Emergence Process Of The English Get-passive

On the surface level,the get-passive and the be-passive in English share high similarities,but the get-passive has attracted a great deal of attention from scholars and has sparked a heated debate in passive voice and other relevant aspects over the past several decades because it possesses many characteristics which are different from those of the traditional be-passive.In recent years,with the rapid development of corpus linguistics,scholars in mounting numbers have begun to adopt corpora to carry on their studies on the get-passive,and the conclusions that are drawn based on corpora are more persuasive than those reached on the basis of introspection.According to previous studies,it can be easily noticed that they mainly focus on the synchronic characteristics of the get-passive,such as its semantic,pragmatic and syntactic features,but research concerning its emergence process is obviously scant.Therefore,this study aims to probe into the emergence process of the get-passive and the factors contributing to the process from a diachronic perspective,with the hope of answering the following two research questions:(1)What is the emergence process of the get-passive?(2)What are the factors contributing to the emergence of the get-passive?For the purpose of precisely answering the two research questions mentioned above,the corpus process software,AntConc,was used to retrieve the all of the research objectives in the Helsinki Corpus of English Texts(HC)first.Next,the research objectives retrieved were classified according to their semantic,pragmatic and syntactic features in different phases.Finally,all the research objectives were analyzed scientifically and systematically based on the grammaticalization theory.The major findings of this study are as follows:(1)The emergence process of the get-passive can be divided into three steps:Step one: From a simple transitive verb to the locative constructiona.Lexicalizing the implicit prepositionb.Extending to a locative construction denoting movementStep two: From a locative construction to an inchoative construction withadjectival past participlesa.Extending prepositions to spatial adverbsb.Extending adverbs to spatial adjectivesc.Extending to adjectival past participlesStep three: From an inchoative construction with adjectival past participles to the get-passivea.Extending to verbal past participles(2)The factors that contributed to the emergence of the get-passive are as follows.In the first step,under the influence of both lexical excorporation and the high use frequency of get,the preposition originally embedded in get gradually separated form get,becoming an independent part.This led to the appearance of the get + preposition construction,which then evolved into the get-locative construction.In the second step,owing to the effects of type-coercion as well as the high used frequency of get,the prepositions in the get-locative construction first extended to spatial adverbs like past and aboard,and then to spatial adjectives such as high and low,and finally to adjectival past participles like drunk and married.In the third step,because of the influences exerted by morphological consistence,semantic ambiguity,viewpoint aspect,cultural contexts and the high use frequency of get,the get + adjectival past participle construction evolved into the get-passive.