oa On the resultative-modal grammaticalisation pathway of German GET verbs – with an outlook on Dutch and Afrikaans

This contribution focuses on grammaticalisation pathways of German resultative and modal constructions using the auxiliaries kriegen ‘to get, to receive’ and bekommen ‘to get, to receive’. In order to illustrate the complex grammaticalisation pathways of the two GET verbs and the subtypes of resultative-modal constructions in which they are used, first, historical and second, (more) contemporary data from varieties of German are analysed. Third, additional evidence is provided by means of already existing findings on Dutch and Afrikaans to complement the hypotheses derived from the analyses of German varieties.

The contribution provides answers to the following questions: Where do the resultative-modal constructions with kriegen and bekommen come from and what about their future potential? What are the main differences and parallels between the kriegen and the bekommen constructions which both use an auxiliary from the semantic network of German GET verbs? What do the synchronic data tell us about the present-day variation of the constructions, but also – on the basis of an “apparent time” hypothesis – about their diachronic grammaticalisation pathways? How do “real time” data correspond to synchronic variation and vice versa? Which parallels or differences can a language comparison reveal? To what extent do the kriegen and bekommen results mirror what we find with regard to Dutch krijgen (‘to get, to receive’) and Afrikaans kry (‘to get, to receive’)?