A Corpus-Based Study on Historical Changes in the Usages of the Be/get Passives in American English

Abstract

Objectives The objective of this thesis is to explore the semantic and syntactic characteristics of the be-passive and get-passive constructions and their usage in corpus data. The primary focus of this thesis is to distinguish between the be-passive and get-passive constructions by providing multiple examples for comparison. Furthermore, it delves deeper into the get-passive construction, categorizing it into different levels of usage.
 Methods This study examines the frequency and usage patterns of be-passive and get-passive constructions from 1810 to 2010, with a focus on their overall frequency and historical evolution across four different time periods. It also investigates how these constructions are used in different genres and analyzes the bonded verbs frequently linked with the get-passive. Additionally, corpus data will be analyzed to gain insights into the real-world contexts of these constructions at the lexical level.
 Results The usage of get-passives has been progressively rising between 1990 and 2010, whereas the occurrence of the be-passive has been decreasing. This suggests that the usage of these constructions may be influenced by social context. There are specific verbs that tend to be more frequently used with the get-passive construction.
 Conclusions The get-passive and be-passive in English have distinct characteristics that set them apart from each other. Although they can usually be used interchangeably, each type of passive creates unique grammatical features. Analyzing the actual usage of the be-passive and get-passive through data from the COHA corpus is a viable approach for evaluating their overall properties.