A Syntactic Account Of English Get-Passive

The present thesis investigates the syntactic derivational mechanism of English get-passive constructions as exemplified by sentences like He got arrested. On an observational level, the get-passive construction is remarkably similar to the be-passive (i.e., a passive formed with auxiliary be) in terms of structural configuration. The verb get, as used in get-passives, is often called an auxiliary. However, one important structural difference to note between the be-passive and the get-passive is that get, unlike its counterpart be, does not function as a true auxiliary. By most syntactic criteria, get in the get-passive behaves just like a full lexical verb.When combined with get, a verb that is characteristic of colloquial English, the result is that the get-passive is used much more in speech than in writing and has an informal flavor, the reverse of the be-passive. In the get-passive, the participle following get is verbal passive in nature. The get-passive should not be confused with the copula verb get followed by an adjective or an adjective in the form of a past participle (e.g., They got very frightened), which is in fact a copular construction and not really passive. The get-passive receives a more dynamic interpretation than the be-passive. The subject of the get-passive is generally animate and is interpreted as somehow responsible for the whole event having taken place. The get-passive often has adversative-and sometimes beneficial-interpretation.The study of passive structures is one of the most familiar topics of syntactic research. The get-passive construction has long been seen as a problematic construction in English, and has been the subject of many investigations. When it comes to the syntactic derivational mechanism of the construction, however, little research work has been done. In the literature, passive get has been analyzed by different researchers as quite different things, ranging from a raising verb to a control verb, a functional verb, and an ECM verb.In this thesis, I argue that there is no strong evidence for treating passive get either as a raising verb, or a control verb, or a functional verb. Alternatively, I suggest that get-passives are in fact Exceptional Case-Marking (ECM) constructions, in which get selects an external argument with agent theta-role as subject, and an embedded clausal argument as complement. What is special with the embedded clausal complement is that it includes a null form reflexive REF as the subject. On this view, the get-passive is essentially a reflexive version of the causative construction. Semantically, the silent reflexive is coreferential with the subject of get. It is base-generated in the complement position of the embedded passive verb, in which it is assigned a theta-role, but no structural Case. Driven by Case, the covert reflexive moves to the embedded subject position, where it receives Case from the matrix verb get via exceptional Case-marking. Accordingly, a get-passive like John got arrested is seen as having structure representation of Johni got[REFi arrested ti]. The assumption that there exists a null reflexive REF in the get-passive is crucial in the following two respects. First, the null reflexive here must be present in order to make the get-passive an ECM biclausal construction, where get is a full lexical verb that selects an individual agent as subject and an embedded clause as complement. Second, the embedded complement clause itself is a passive structure with internal NP-movement, where the null reflexive originates as a direct object to the passive verb, contrary to the well-established assumption that the surface subject of get is base-generated as the complement of the passive verb.The analysis proposed here is both empirically and theoretically motivated. It can be shown that characteristics often associated with the get-passive, such as dynamicity, responsibility of the surface subject for the occurrence of the event, and a tendency for expressing events that are of an adversarial (or beneficial) nature, can all be derived from the syntactic characteristics of get.