A Large-scale Diachronic Analysis of the English Passive Alternation

Bohmann, Axel; Müller, Julia; Honkanen, Mirka; Neuhausen, Miriam

doi:10.1515/9783111017433-003

Cited by 1 publication

(7 citation statements)

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“…Similarly, Bohmann et al. (2023) find that the semantic constraint weakens across time in their AmE data. It will be interesting to see whether semantics has an effect on the passive alternation in our world Englishes data.…”

Section: Previous Researchmentioning

confidence: 69%

“…Fehringer (2022) finds that in her older speakers, there is an effect of semantics in that BE shows a clear preference for benefactive contexts, but in younger speakers, semantics of the construction no longer has an effect. Similarly, Bohmann et al (2023) find that the semantic constraint weakens across time in their AmE data. It will be interesting to see whether semantics has an effect on the passive alternation in our world Englishes data.…”

Section: Constraints On the Be: Get Passive Alternationmentioning

confidence: 78%

“…With the exception of Fehringer (2022) and Bohmann et al (2023), this is the only study that takes a multifactorial approach to the BE:GET passive alternation and the first to do so for a broad range of world Englishes. With this approach, we aim to answer the following research questions:…”

Section: Research Questionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…This is important because previous research indicates that get ‐passives are used more frequently in speech than in writing (Hundt, 2009), while they are particularly rare in formal writing (Mair, 2006: 111; Leech et al., 2009: 158). Moreover, Bohmann et al.’s (2023) multifactorial analysis of the passive alternation in the Corpus of Historical American English has shown that the association of the get ‐variant with informal contexts persists across time, while other factors weaken. In other words, variation according to mode (speech vs. writing) and register (formal vs. informal) is likely to have an influence on the be:get‐ passive alternation, and it remains to be seen how these factors interact with regional variation.…”

Section: Previous Researchmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Biewer (2009), who investigates both get ‐ and be ‐passives looks at them separately rather than as a choice context. Only two previous studies have modelled the be:get ‐passive alternation so far, namely Fehringer's (2022) multifactorial analysis of the alternation in a regional variety of British English (BrE) and Bohmann et al.’s (2023) study on diachronic American English (AmE), which takes a bottom‐up, vector‐based approach at modelling semantic aspects of the choice between the two variants.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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The be‐ versus get‐passive alternation in world Englishes

Hundt,

Dallas,

Nakanishi

2023

World Englishes

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Multifactorial studies of the be:get‐passive alternation are still rare. On the basis of the International Corpus of English, this is the first investigation to use mixed modelling for the passive alternation in world Englishes. Overall, our findings reveal that regional differences are far less important than language‐internal constraints, with Inner and Outer Circle varieties largely sharing a core grammar. Additionally, while there is qualitative evidence confirming the interchangeability of the two passive allostructions, our generalised‐mixed model reveals that the choice is still heavily influenced by the different semantic origins of the variants, evident not only in the adversative semantics of the get‐passive but also in a tendency to prefer human/animate subjects. The strong prescriptive reaction to the progressive passive in the Late Modern period, however, has not resulted in a marked preference for get over be in progressives in our data.

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Section: Previous Researchmentioning

confidence: 69%

Section: Constraints On the Be: Get Passive Alternationmentioning

confidence: 78%