The get-unit in Corpora of Spontaneous and Non-spontaneous Mediated Language: from Syntactic Versatility to Semantic and Pragmatic Similarity

Abstract

Conceptually, the present account is divided into two parts: Section 2 offers a syntactic description of the types of the get-sentences present in spoken American English, whereas Section 3 is a tentative explanation of their semantics and pragmatics. The descriptive section gives an account of the syntax of all the possible clause patterns and classes of verb complementation in which get locates as a full and as an auxiliary-like verb (cf. Quirk et al. 1991 and Biber et al. 1999); the explanatory section, instead, illustrates the resultative character of what I call the result marker get by hypothesizing two basic meanings responsible for the semantics of the get-sentence (i.e. the core and the peripheral meaning of the get-unit). Section 3 also highlights the tendency of get to occur within negative contexts, and the causative mark it acquires when preceding a noun phrase (henceforth NP).