A Corpus-based Study On The Get+V-ed Construction ——A Diachronic Construction Grammar Perspective

Get+V-ed construction,as an important linguistic phenomenon in English,has always been the focus of the research field.N（?）el’s（2007）diachronic construction grammar theory combines historical linguistics,grammaticalization theory,and construction grammar to focus on the formation and evolution of the “form-meaning”pair of a construction.It overcomes the shortcoming of traditional grammaticalization theory and provides a new way to study the evolution of language over time.Based on the diachronic construction grammar and the data collected from the corpus of COCA,COHA,and OED,this study focuses on the synchronic features and diachronic development of the get+V-ed construction to answer the following questions: 1)What are the syntactic and semantic features of the inchoative get+V-ed construction and the passive get+V-ed construction? 2)What is the relation between the inchoative get+V-ed construction and the passive get+V-ed construction? 3)What processes are involved in the form and meaning changes of the get+V-ed construction?The findings of this study are as follows.1)According to COCA,the two types of get+V-ed construction have different syntactic and semantic characteristics.In the inchoative one,the verb get implies an inchoative meaning,and the past participles are all adjectival.The subject acts as the patient or experiencer,highlighting the state change.Whereas in the passive one,the verb get implies a passive meaning,and the past participles can be adjectival and verbal.The subject serves as the agent and the patient,emphasizing the whole process of an event.2)According to OED and COHA,the inchoative get+V-ed construction shows its first occurrence much earlier than the passive get+V-ed construction,which to some extent confirms the inference of this study: they should be regarded as two independent constructions,with the passive one deriving from the inchoative one.3)The “form-meaning” evolution of get+V-ed construction goes through a process from constructional change to constructionalization,and then to a deeper constructional change.Throughout its diachronic development,both the schematicity and productivity are increasing,while the compositionality is decreasing.This study explores the diachronic development of get+V-ed construction under the framework of diachronic construction grammar,which is in line with the current trend of diachronic language research.In addition,quantitative analysis of the authentic corpus data helps to objectively present the characteristics of the evolution of get+V-ed construction,which to a certain extent complements the grammaticalization study of get+V-ed construction.