Adversative, Benefactive and Neutral Readings in BE- and GET-Passive Constructions: A Minimalist Analysis
Abstract
Passive constructions are typically analysed in terms of agent suppression, whereby the passive is defined as a structure that does not realise the Agent as an external argument. While this assumption underlies most structural accounts of passivisation, it becomes theoretically problematic in distinguishing BE-passives from GET-passives, which are often assumed to share an identical passive Voice configuration. Previous analyses generally derive both constructions from a uniform syntactic structure, with be and get treated as elements occupying the light v position. Through a qualitative analysis of 80 hand-selected passive clauses (comprising 20 instances of adversative, 30 of benefactive, and 30 of neutral types) extracted from three popular novels in the Allnovel.net database, this study explores the GET/BE alternation and analyses it within the layered verb phrase (vP shell) framework of the Minimalist Program (Chomsky, 2015). The analysis shows that in BE-passives, be functions as a copular element realised at the Tense node, encoding tense and agreement, while passive Voice remains an abstract head without additional affectedness features. In contrast, in GET-passives, get is not base-generated in the light v node, but is realised at the Voice node, where it carries a [+Affectedness] feature that licenses adversative and benefactive readings. These findings demonstrate that the BE/GET contrast reflects a genuine structural asymmetry rather than mere lexical variation, necessitating a feature-based differentiation of passive realisation within a layered verb phrase architecture.
Keywords: adversative; benefactive; neutral; Minimalist; affectedness features
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DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.17576/3L-2026-3203-18
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