Journal of Semantics Advance Access originally published online on March 14, 2005
Journal of Semantics 2005 22(4):401-438; doi:10.1093/jos/ffh019
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© The Author 2005. Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved.
The Semantic and Syntactic Decomposition of get: An Interaction Between Verb Meaning and Particle Placement
Universität Leipzig
Correspondence: ANDREW McINTYRE, Institut für Anglistik Universität Leipzig Beethovenstr. 15 04107 Leipzig e-mail: mcintyre{at}rz.uni-leipzig.de
VPs with get and a PP/particle provide an argument for lexical decomposition in syntax. Get (and German kriegen) has a ‘hindrance’ reading, which does not denote causative events and resembles manage in that the result is portrayed as hard to achieve, and in that possibility operators do not affect the meaning under negation: I didn't (=couldn't) get the key in. These effects surprisingly follow from an analysis where hindrance-get VPs are nothing more than inchoatives of have-VPs of the type have the key in. In get out one's wallet, we see another reading which is genuinely causative and is not found with German kriegen. Hindrance-get VPs (like VPs with have, want and need, which decompose with HAVE, and unlike causative get and other causative-agentive verbs) disallow particle-object order (get/take out your wallet vs. *get/have/want/need in the key). The effects of semantics on word order are shown to be unmysterious only if the HAVE predicate in the meaning of hindrance-get is a syntactic head.
1 Other effects of the presupposition: Answering ‘no’ to (i) admits attempted envenomation. In (ii) get suggests that I could not have attained the result unaided (though I would have tried to), but with take I could have refused to act towards attaining the result unaided, though I perhaps could have attained it.
- (i) Did you get poison into anyone's beer? (ii) I wouldn't have {got/taken} Basil home unaided.
2 The variants with cannot/be unable in structures like (10a, b) sound more natural than those without. The German translations of get show the opposite preference, cf. the literal and idiomatic glosses in (i). I cannot explain this, but an explanation seems unnecessary given that the Anglo-German contrast is not specific to get, cf. the glosses in (ii).
- (i) Ich kriege den Nagel nicht durchs Brett; Wir kommen nicht da rein
I get the nail not through the board; We come not there in
‘I can't get the nail through the board’; ‘We can't get in there’
- (ii) Ich finde/verstehe/sehe/höre/fühle/rieche/schmecke es nicht
I find/understand/see/hear/feel/taste it not
‘I can't find/understand/see/hear/feel/smell/taste it’
- (ii) Ich finde/verstehe/sehe/höre/fühle/rieche/schmecke es nicht
3 In Max und Moritz, Erster Streich (Wilhelm Busch, 1865) we read ...Kriegt sie jetzt das Messer her, literally ‘gets she now the knife hither’. The context suggests that (her)kriegen should be glossed with ‘fetch’, suggesting that a (now impossible) causative use of kriegen + PP once existed. This exception proves the rule, for kriegen + DP was formerly used agentively, true to its original meaning ‘obtain by war’.
4 (18a2) is attested elsewhere as a direction of semantic specialization. It is found with some uses of before. I sat before the piano entails intent to do something with the piano (e.g. play it, clean it, inspect it), while I sat in front of the piano does not force this entailment (cf. The sofa was taken, so I sat {in front of/*before} the piano while watching the film. (18a2) also distinguishes take up from pick up. One can take up a pen or stone if one intends to do something with it (e.g. use it, look at it), but not in the context of streetcleaning work, where only pick up is usable. That (18a2) constrains both take up and causative get in some varieties may suggest principled connections between (18a2) and possession, but (18a2) is an idiomatic property of take up not found with other uses of take, for (ia) entails no intended use of or interaction with the sword. A final note on the bigger context of (18a2) is that it should not be confused with functional specializations like that in (ic), which entails intended canonical use of the sword, while (ib) need not entail this, but (in varieties constrained by (18a2)) does entail intent to do something with it.
- (i) a. He {took out/pulled out} the sword in order to clean the sheath
- b. He got out the sword {to look at it/*to clean the sheath}
- c. He {brandished/ pulled/ drew} the sword {*to look at it/*to clean the sheath}
- b. He got out the sword {to look at it/*to clean the sheath}
5 Two complications with participial structures like (22c): Firstly, some scholars see the non-responsibility reading of the German structure in (22c) as a passive based on dative structures like ich verband ihm den Arm (lit. ‘I bandaged himdat the arm’). English lacks a comparable ditransitive structure (*I bandaged him his arm), but get is still possible in (22c), showing that the passive analysis of the German in (22c) is redundant. I show elsewhere that German kriegen-subjects can paraphrase datives because they are both arguments of the same HAVE relation. Secondly, beside the hindrance reading, the English in (22c) has a genuinely causative reading ‘get someone to bandage one's arm’ which is impossible with kriegen. This difference between get and kriegen may be systematic since there are other causative-agentive uses of get which are impossible with kriegen, namely agentive get + DP structures (I tried to get the book) and causative get + PP structures.
6 The tie-in between directional prepositions and responsibility recalls Déchaine et al. (1994), who derive responsibility have by incorporating a specifically directional preposition into a copula, but the account suffers from the lack of a plausible connection between the directionality of the preposition and responsibility semantics. The incompatibility of unintentional have/get with small clauses headed by inherently directional PPs also recalls the claim (e.g. Belvin 1993, Harley 1998, Ritter & Rosen 1998) that unintentional have requires stative complements, while responsibility have may have eventive complements. I know of no satisfying account for this generalization.
7 An open (apparently undiscussed) question is how BECOME interacts with PPs. My earlier dealings with motion sentences eschewed BECOME in favour of Jackendoff's (1990) GO function relating entities to paths. I found the claim of the BECOME analysis that motion sentences like (ia) assert the inchoation of states like (ib, c) problematic in view of hostility of the states to directional prepositions found in motion sentences.
- (i) a. Cuthbert got (the books) {into/to/onto} the truck
- b. Cuthbert had the books {in/at/on/*into/*to/*onto} the truck
- c. The books were {in/at/on/*into/*to/*onto} the truck
- b. Cuthbert had the books {in/at/on/*into/*to/*onto} the truck
8 One could redefine ‘particle’ to include the few non-prepositions that can separate verbs and objects (let slipV a chance, let goV the rope, set freeA the captives, cut shortA the meeting), but these are irrelevant to get. The only superficially non-prepositional item relevant to us is home in take home the books, but home distributes like a PP in other contexts like coordination (they went [home or to work]), use in the complement of way (the way home/down/into the house) and locative inversion (home/into the house/down ran the children).
9 *Receive in DP obeys a ban on particle verbs with Latinate stems (Fraser 1976) which, though not exceptionless (partition off DP), seems real, witness ‘Germanicizing’ truncations like sum(*marise) up and (*con)fess up ‘own up’.
10 The account in section 4.4 would also block particle-object order with unintentional get, but unintentional get does not seem to combine with particles, perhaps because of its aversion to specifically directional prepositions.
11 Had there been an English verb krig with the same set of senses as kriegen, I surmise that this verb would always have disallowed particle-object order, since kriegen + PP has hindrance-specialized and unintentional readings, but no genuinely causative use. If krig had existed, this essay would have been much shorter, as there would have been no need to distinguish causative from hindrance readings.
12 (43c) is not an idiom. Combinations like take down, write down, scribble down, note down show that the particle has a semi-productive sense ‘onto paper’.
13 If (50) is a morphological idiosyncrasy, (50) need not hold of all languages with Vhave. My account merely predicts that items decomposing with HAVE in a language should all behave alike in either allowing or disallowing incorporation. While German shows no word order facts speaking for head movement of particles, Zeller (2001: chap. 6) suggests that affixation of German particle verbs requires incorporation of the particle into the verb. A preliminary check suggests that particle verbs with kriegen, bekommen and haben resist affixation (*heraushabbar ‘have-out-able’, *herausbekommbar ‘get-out-able’, *heraushaber ‘haver-outer’, *herauskrieger ‘getter-outer’, cf. herausnehmbar ‘take-out-able’, herausnehmer ‘taker-outer’), but it is hard to control for extraneous factors here.