Theget-passive in Tyneside English

Abstract

AbstractThis paper provides a quantitative variationist analysis of the distribution ofget- versusbe-passives in spoken Tyneside English. Taking data from theDiachronic Electronic Corpus of Tyneside English(1960s to 2010), the paper uses mixed-effects modelling to examine a wide range of possible constraints on the distribution ofgetversusbe, some of which have been discussed at length in the literature on theget-passive (e.g. subject animacy, adversative semantics) and some of which have received less attention (e.g. grammatical person, tense, aspectuality). It demonstrates that the use of theget-passive is determined by a complex combination of semantic and syntactic factors (subject animacy, telicity, non-neutral semantics, tense and grammatical person). Moreover, it argues that, despite the dramatic rise in frequency ofget-passives over time (with younger speakers using them even more frequently thanbe-passives), most of the constraints remain in place and the variant is pragmatically marked. This stands in sharp contrast to the findings of recent investigations into the grammaticalization ofget-passives in standard British and American English, which found that increased frequency in those varieties was also accompanied by semantic bleaching and generalization.