Get-versus be-passives in English: a functional investigation

Thompson, D., Scheepers, C. and Myachykov, A. (2012) Get-versus be-passives in English: a functional investigation. In: Psycholinguistics in Flanders (PiF2012), Nijmegen, The Netherlands, 6-7 Jun 2012,

Abstract

We report evidence from syntactic priming showing that speakers produce more be-passive responses after full-passive primes than after truncated-passive primes. Since a comparable main effect was absent in get-passive responses, this suggests that by-phrase inclusion supports the use of be- but not of get-passives (in line with corpus data). Most importantly, our analyses revealed an auxiliary-repetition main effect (more be-passive responses after be-passive primes and more get-passive responses after get-passive primes). Our findings suggest that, although the same syntactic representation may underlie both passives in early development, these forms later become associated with distinct construction types susceptible to their own lexically-specific auxiliary priming effects.

• Item Type: Conference Proceedings
• Status: Published
• Refereed: Yes
• Glasgow Author(s) Enlighten ID: Scheepers, Dr Christoph and Myachykov, Dr Andriy
• Authors: Thompson, D., Scheepers, C., and Myachykov, A.
• College/School: College of Medical Veterinary and Life Sciences > School of Psychology & Neuroscience

Project Code	Award No	Project Name	Principal Investigator	Funder's Name	Funder Ref	Lead Dept
50954	1	Get- versus be-passives in English: a functional investigation	Christoph Scheepers	Economic & Social Research Council (ESRC)	ES/G045720/1	RI NEUROSCIENCE & PSYCHOLOGY