Abstract
This paper provides a contrastive analysis of the German
bekommen
and the English
get
passive. Sparked by their identical formation (GET verb + past participle), it contrasts their diachronic
evolution and systemic function based on previous research and data from four corpora (
Die ZEIT
,
Mode-/Beauty Blogs, TIME Magazine Corpus, COCA
). Indicating that both passives
are originally constrained in similar ways, e.g., by subject animacy, the data suggest that
bekommen
and
get
passive share significant commonalities. However, the GET passives in question grammaticalize from
different source constructions. Therefore, they tread different paths of grammaticalization, with parallels such as the Subject
Animacy Constraint becoming relativized when put into diachronic context. Besides grammaticalizing
along
different paths of grammaticalization,
bekommen
and
get
passives grammaticalize
within
different, language-specific voice systems. The contemporary German and English voice system have
different functional gaps, which are, as will be argued, systematically addressed by the newly grammaticalizing GET passives.