Transitivity and the get-passive: oddities in the English grammar*
Junichi Toyota
Introduction
The get-passive has been a subject of research for more than several decades, but there are many characteristics
that have gone unnoticed. In this paper, this construction is analysed in relation to transitivity. Transitivity is oneof the crucial characteristics that defines the grammar of Present-Day English (Toyota 2012) and a closer look at therelationship between transitivity and the get-passive will yield something unexpected in the English grammar. It isargued that the get-passive behaves oddly in the Present-Day English grammar, which makes it difficult to analyse
this construction.

Transitivity
Transitivity can be divided into two types, i.e. syntactic and semantic (cf. Toyota 2008; 2009). Syntactictransitivity is unique to English, where the presence or absence of a direct object decides transitivity. In other words,
whether the energy transfer from actor to underdoer exists or not is clearly distinguishable. Semantic transitivity,on the other hand, varies according to various grammatical features in a clause, as demonstrated in works such as
Hopper and Thompson (1980) and Taylor (2003). In this type, the energy transfer is gradable and there are cases
where the transitive-intransitive division is hard to discern, and there are various grammatical tactics to express subtle
differences. For instance, altering the case marking on the direct object is a common tactics among the IndoEuropean languages. The genitive case in (1b) from Serbian denotes a partitive reading, and thus, the transfer isonly partially achieved. The accusative marking in (1a), on the other hand, express that the transfer is complete, i.e.
higher transitivity. Historically, languages develop semantic transitivity first, and some have then developed
syntactic transitivity. It is argued here that the get-passive is sensitive to semantic transitivity, but not syntactictransitivity. This is the only construction in English with obvious semantic transitivity, making it a very uniqueconstruction in English.
Serbian(1)a. Moram
dapitimvodu
need.PRS.1SG that drink.PRS.1SG water.ACC‘I need to drink water.’b. Moram
dapitimvodeneed.PRS.1SG that drink.PRS.1SG water.GEN‘I need to drink water.’
Passive and TransitivityTransitivity is a key grammatical feature in understanding the passive voice (Kittilä 2002: 23), and theinteraction between them may vary according to the language in question. Anglocentric analyses may make it lessobvious in English, but transitivity can be sometimes crucial in other languages such as German (e.g. Arnett
2004). Generally, the passive clause is associated with high transitivity, but some languages employ syntactictransitivity, and others semantic transitivity. This difference results in different grammatical behaviours in thepassive construction. Thus, the Germanic languages except English, for instance, generally allow passivisation ofmonovalent verbs as long as they are semantically transitive, as in (1) from Dutch. In English, on the other hand, it
is possible to turn perception verbs, which are semantically intransitive but syntactically transitive, into the passive,
as demonstrated in (2).
Dutch
(1)
Er wordt
geflotenitbecome.PRS
whistle.PST.PRT‘There is whistling.’(2)a. Many people in this town like this film.
b. This film is liked by many people in this town.

Characteristics of get-passive
As for the get-passive, it does not behave like the be-passive as in (2b). Therefore, (3b) is not fully grammatical.
This is partly because of the by-phrase, which hardly ever occurs with the get-passive, but what is more crucial is thetype of transitivity employed, i.e. the get-passive operates on archaic semantic transitivity, although the passivisationof monovalent verbs is, like its be-passive counterpart, not possible, contra (1).
(3)
a. This film is liked by many people in this town.
b. *This film gets liked by many people in this town.
This grammatical oddity is accountable once the source of this construction is taken into consideration. Outof two sources proposed so far, as Toyota (2008) argues, the middle/reflexive voice origin is more plausible due tovarious semantic peculiarities associated with the get-passive. The middle/reflexive voice is normally semanticallyintransitive due to one of its core meanings, i.e. spontaneity. When events spontaneously take place, energy transfer
is reduced to the bare minimum without a volitional actor. In addition, the subject control and the facilitative reading(i.e. the subject’s generic characteristics, cf. Kemmer 1993), features often associated with the middle voice, are also
found in the get-passive, but is not detectable in the be-passive. The subject animacy in the get-passive makes asharp contrast with that in the be-passive, and the subject in the get-passive is predominantly human animate. Thus,
the subject entity in (4a) is a passive recipient of shooting, but in (4b) it is possible to detect an additional sense,
namely that the subject is responsible for being shot, i.e. He got himself shot. Finer distinctions in energy transfer,
such as the facilitative reading, are not normally in languages with syntactic transitivity.
(4)
a. He was shot.
b. He got shot.
Summary
Semantic transitivity in the get-passive is a residue of an earlier grammatical structure, highlighting at the sametime the lack of the middle voice in English. Since syntactic transitivity dominates the English grammar, the factthat semantic transitivity can be detected in the get-passive makes this construction very odd in the Present-Day
English grammar. Although transitivity has not been given its deserved attention in analysis of the get-passive, it ispossible to state that semantic transitivity is what makes an analysis of the get-passive difficult.
Notes* Abbreviations used here are as follows: ACC = accusative; GEN = genitive; PRS = present; PRT = participle; PST= past; SG = singular.
References
Arnett, Carlee (2004) A cognitive approach to the semantics of the German passive. New York: Edwin Mellen Press.
Hopper Paul J. and Sandra A. Thompson (1980) ‘Transitivity in grammar and discourse.’ Language 56, 251–339.
Kemmer, Suzanne (1993) Middle voice. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Kittila¨, Seppo (2002) Transitivity: Towards a Comprehensive Typology. Turku: University of Turku Press.
Taylor John (2003) Linguistic categorization. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Toyota, Junichi (2008) Diachronic change in the passive voice. Basingstoke: Palgrave.
Toyota, Junichi (2009) ‘The history of Indo-European languages: alignment change as a clue.’ In Loudová,Kateřina and Marie Žáková (eds.) Early European Languages in the Eyes of Modern Linguistics. Brno:
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