The passive is traditionally thought of as formed with be + passive participle of transitive verb. The form with get + participle would be a periphrastic equivalent having a modal sense including the idea of volition or intent. At the risk of widening this thread to other verb phrases with modal sense, ATEGers might consider how they approach the following expressions. Do we leave them out of the formal styles that are most acceptable in so many writing assignments?
I think that there are quite a few expressions in English that might be classed as periphrastic equivalents to the five modal verbs of a) will/would, b) shall/should, c) can/could, d) may/might, and e) must. These seem to fall into eight formal categories so that there could be as many as 40 possibilities. Some must fall together, as there are only the following 20 kinds that I have noted. Perhaps ATEGers can suggest others or some other classification or mistakes in these.
1) a) like to go, want to go; b) ought to go; d) get to go; e) have to go, need to go, deserve to go;
2) a) be to go; e) be to go;
3) a) be willing to go; b) be supposed to go; c) be able to go, be free to go; d) be privileged to go;
4) a) be about to go;
5) a) be going to go, be fixing to go;
6) b) be obliged to go; c) be allowed to go; d) be allowed to go; e) be made to go;
7) e) have got to go, had ought to go;
8) a) had rather go; e) had better go, had best go.
Bruce
-----Original Message-----
From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Craig Hancock
Sent: Tuesday, February 24, 2009 6:47 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: he was run over/he got run over
A few more observations about "got." In English, there is often an
ambiguity about whether a past participle after the "be" auxiliary is
adjective or part of the verb phrase. "The beer got drunk" is passive,
but what about "Paul got drunk" or "Paul was drunk"? "Paul got sick" is
not passive, but what about "Paul got lost"? We can substitue "become"
without feeling as though the meaning has changed. "Paul became lost."
Does that mean we are shifting "lost" to adjective status or was it an
adejective all along? "The child was lost during a shopping trip" seems
passive, but "That child is lost" does not, at least to me. But context
might change either.
Biber et. al. in the Longman grammar say "many of these verbs have a
different emphasis when used with the get-passive. With "be", they
express a state, such as the state of 'being married' or 'being
involved'. With "get", they are more dynamic, describing the process of
getting into that state" (Student version, pages 171-2). Think, for
example, of the difference between "was involved" and "got involved."
The second certainly implies some sort of volition on the part of the
actor.
"He was so stupid. He got fired on the first day."
"He was so unlucky. He was fired on the first day."
To me, the "got" goes best with the notion that "he" did something to
deserve it.
Sometimes we get hung up trying to classify a word or phrase in one
category or another, forgetting that our categories may be limiting
what we are able to understand.
The language is under no obligation to conform to our ideas about it.
Craig
> Bill,
>
> On "gotta," informally, and especially in children, you can hear "Do I
> gotta?" with a little bit of a whine to it.
>
> These aren't very serial verb like. In the West African instantiation,
> serial verbs constructions typically have a single subject, a single
> auxiliary, but multiple intransitive and transitive verbs. In the usual
> cases, verbs are used to mark valence, that is, they're used like case
> markers and prepositions in languages like German and English. Where we
> would typically have one verb with multiple arguments, as in
>
> My brother brought me home a book for my child
>
> where "me" is benefactive, "home" is locative, "a book" is object, and "my
> daughter" is dative, Yoruba, spoken by about 20 million people in Nigeria
> and Benin, would have
> (without some important vowel and tone diacritics thanks to ASCII)
>
> egbon mi ba mi mu iwe wa si ile fun omo
> mi
> elder-sibling my help me pick-up-light-object book come to house give
> child my
>
> (I fear email will mess up spacing on this. Treat anything hyphenated as
> a single gloss for a single word.) Ba, mu, wa, si, and fun are all verbs,
> each of which has independent lexical functions as verbs by themselves.
> There is some debate as to whether Yoruba has prepositions at all, and I
> tend to think it doesn't although there are two words that may be shifting
> in that direction. Si "to" is clearly a verb here even though it glosses
> as "in."
>
> I could put a negative "ko" before "ba" and get "didn't" or "a" before
> "ba" and get "will" or "ti" before "ba" and get perfect aspect, or even
> combinations of these and other auxiliaries.
>
> Serial verbs can also be used for multi-event sentences, like
>
> I went to the market, bought meat, brought it home, cooked it, and ate it.
>
> Mo lo si igboro ra eran mu wa si ile se jeun.
> I go to market buy meat pick-up-light-object come to house cook eat.
>
> This sentence too allows negatives and auxiliaries only before the first
> verb, "lo."
>
> The language does have dependency marking on verbs, so "I want to go"
> would have a lengthening of the verb for want with a high tone on the
> vowel:
>
> Mo fe e lo
> I want to go
>
> which serves as something like an infinitive marker in the language.
>
> Yoruba does not have sentence coordination of the sort English has, using
> a word that can conjoin things of the same category, nouns, adjectives,
> verbs, adverbs, etc. It does have a particle that goes in the auxiliary
> that means something like "and then," but there's no actual "and" for
> verbs, verb phrases, or clauses.
>
> What distinguishes serial verb constructions from complement structures is
> that serial verbs have no morphological marking to show their
> relationship. Order is important, but no morphological marking like for
> the "want to" construction.
>
> Just as an aside, in Yoruba, a verb can only be a consonant, a vowel, and
> a tone, with a few narrowly defined classes of exception. With 18
> consonants, 10 vowels, 3 tones, and some phonotactic constraints, the
> total mathematically possible set of verbs comes to 510. Of these, only
> about 335 actually occur. Yoruba uses serial verb collocations, like
>
> Fi enikan si ile
> Take someone to ground (different final vowel and tone than "ile" "house")
>
> Which means "divorce someone" to express a very flexible range of
> meanings. "Fi si ile" can also mean simply "put it down."
>
> And some serial verbs are used adverbially:
>
> Mo ti se ise tan
> I perfect do work complete
> I've finished the work.
>
> There are, of course, variations on these structures in other languages,
> and additional constructions that don't occur in Yoruba, but this covers
> the bulk of serial verb constructions of the West African and Atlantic
> creole varieties. Serial verbs are also found in east and southeast Asia
> and New Guinea (the island), but many of these languages are almost purely
> analytic, with virtually no inflectional or derivational morphology, so
> they have somewhat different properties.
>
> Perhaps something like "come give me a hug" would be like a serial verb
> construction, but there aren't many other structures in English that would
> correspond to serial verbs.
>
> Herb
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar
> [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Spruiell, William C
> Sent: 2009-02-23 18:48
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Re: he was run over/he got run over
>
> Dear All:
>
> I've been fiddling with these constructions, and have now become firmly
> ambivalent about what to call parts of them. The test I usually use for
> "full auxiliary status" is checking to see if the helping verb can show
> up in front of the subject in a question. "Get" in the get-passive can't
> do that, and neither can "got to" in its quasimodal use -- but the
> quasipassive 'get' isn't the same as 'get to,' and I don't want to call
> it a quasimodal.
>
> Also, you can't get a do-form showing up for deontic "got to" (*Does he
> gotta go?), although you can with the otherwise-similar-seeming "have
> to" (Does he hafta go?). They *are* possible with the get-passive (Did
> he get run over?), which implies that 'get' should be treated as the
> main verb. Do-forms are also possible with the "get to" that implies
> permission (Does he get to go?" but I'd think that's just evidence that
> the second is more generally "Get X" with X as an infinitive.
>
> Herb -- how serial verb-ish are these? I know English isn't officially
> supposed to have those but from my very limited, and dated, knowledge of
> Cambodian, the pattern certainly seems familiar. I seem to remember
> you've mentioned SVCs, but apologies if I've switched the context on it.
>
> Sincerely,
>
> Bill Spruiell
>
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar
> [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Myers, Marshall
> Sent: Monday, February 23, 2009 4:46 PM
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Re: he was run over/he got run over
>
> Dave,
>
> I was the one suggesting that the construction may be a "get" passive.
>
> Like a garden variety passive, the actor in the sentence is either
> hidden or could be in a "by-phrase." "He got run over (by a truck.)"
>
> When the object of the "by-phrase" becomes the subject of the converted
> sentence, like the "to be" form in the garden variety passive, the
> converted sentence drops the auxiliary: Joe was run over by a truck"
> becomes "The truck ran over Joe." And "He got run over by a truck"
> becomes "The truck ran over him." Notice also that in both cases of the
> conversion of both types of passives, the verb then is marked for tense
> (obviously, it has to be).
>
> I'm not suggesting any generalizations beyond these, but, as I
> understand it, the "get passive" does bear some credence in some
> grammarians' minds.
>
> In other situations, I can understand why "get" can act like an
> auxiliary.
>
> Marshall
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar
> [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of David Kehe
> Sent: Friday, February 20, 2009 1:16 PM
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Re: he was run over/he got run over
>
> Scott,
> I agree with Janet calling "got" a helping verb. I tell my students
> that passive voice consists of an auxiliary verb and past participle.
> I'd be interested to know why you and Patty would consider "got" a
> model.
>
> Dave
>
> ________________________________
>
> From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar on behalf of Patricia
> Lafayllve
> Sent: Fri 2/20/2009 8:58 AM
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Re: he was run over/he got run over
>
>
>
> Scott-
>
>
>
> I can see the "logic" of calling it a passive with "got" as the modal,
> but I'd probably let the student know that the construction was
> "informal" and make sure they know how to construct a passive using
> "formal" methods (ie "was run over"). Does that make sense? I am
> posting while jet-lagged, here...
>
>
>
> -patty
>
>
>
> ________________________________
>
> From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar
> [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Scott Woods
> Sent: Friday, February 20, 2009 10:33 AM
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: he was run over/he got run over
>
>
>
> List,
>
> My previous message on this topic delivered itself before I had finished
> it. Here is the complete message.
>
>
>
> Recently, a student wrote "he got run over." This seems to be a common
> way of expressing the passive.
>
>
>
> Would you characterize this as a passive? Would you analyze "run" as
> the verb of the sentence and "got" as a modal operating like "was" in a
> normally constructed (was run over) passive?
>
> Scott Woods
>
>
>
>
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