ON THE ORIGIN AND DEVELOPMENT OF THE GET-PASSIVE: WITH SPECIAL REFERENCE TO GRAMMATICALIZATION

Abstract

This paper aims to clarify the origin and development of the get-passive in the history of English, and account for the process of its development in terms of the grammaticalization of get. It is proposed that the origin of the get-passive is “inchoative get + predicative adjective,” based on empirical data from historical corpora. After establishing the exact path of the development of the get-passive, it is shown to be neatly captured in terms of the grammaticalization of get from a lexical verb to a light verb, in accordance with the principle of Late Merge proposed by Gelderen (2004).