Three “competing” auxiliaries of a non-canonical passive

This paper focuses on the German GET passive and its auxiliaries kriegen ‘to get/receive’, bekommen ‘to get/receive’ and erhalten ‘to receive’. Although the co-existence of three auxiliaries is unique for Germanic GET passives, research to date has provided very limited information with respect to the relevant linguistic and socio-pragmatic factors which contribute to the German GET passive auxiliary selection. The main aim of the paper is to identify the crucial parameters of auxiliary selection that account for the distribution of German kriegen, bekommen and erhalten. Among the selection parameters discussed, the emphasis will be on the factor “language space” and its correlation to the quantitative and qualitative occurrences of the German GET passive in present day German.