Is German gehören an auxiliary?

This case study looks at the construction gehören + passive perfect participle (participle II) in present-day German. It focuses on a synchronic analysis, but also considers diachronic evidence. The construction has grammaticalized to a modal passive marker in which the participle typically expresses an unpleasant action, such as punishment, on the patient. Synchronic evidence suggests that gehören shows typical features of auxiliation in this construction, which does not allow a clear-cut classification of the verb. It should rather be seen as located along the Verb-to-TAM cline proposed in Heine (1993). Gehören + participle II can also be seen as a form-meaning pairing in the sense of Construction Grammar.