Sprung from a common source? : the sources of passive constructions in English and German

![CDATA[This paper deals with the OE and OHG predecessors of passive constructions in the Modern English and German. It is a well-known fact that both languages developed the voice category in a similar direction. Though both languages grammaticalized different verbs as passive auxiliaries, the function of the Modern English construction of be + past participle overlaps in many respects with that of the German construction of werden + past participle. We start from the assumption that the introduction of periphrastic passive constructions into the verbal systems of English and German is a new development which (i) begins from the same point of departure (in West-Germanic), and (ii), after a short period of parallel history, runs in opposite directions, promoting different verbs to the default passive auxiliaries. We attempt to discover language-specific factors which influenced these developmental paths, focusing in particular on the situation in OE/ OHG. Both OE and OHG possessed predicative constructions consisting of a copula verb (OE beon, wesan, weorðan/ OHG sīn, werdan) and a (past) participle which still often agreed with the subject in number and case. These basically adjectival predications are often said to display similar formal, distributional and functional characteristics. However, to our knowledge, there is no detailed description of such similarities and potential differences between the OE and OHG relevant sources of the modern passive constructions. Typically, the chief similarity is seen in their supposed passive meaning. However, it is far from clear that at least some of these constructions did function as passives at that time. For example, it has been recently assumed that (the system of) these constructions in OHG primarily performed aspectual functions (see Eroms 2000), i.e. they did not function as passive periphrases and could only be interpreted as such due to the passive meaning of the past participle form (of transitive verbs). For OE the difference between constructions with beon/wesan and weorðan has so far escaped a precise definition, and its aspectual overtones have not been sufficiently delimitated from the assumed passive functions (cf. Fischer & van der Wurff 2006: 109-198) We will show results from a corpus study of OE and OHG with a particular focus on the constructions with OE beon, wesan, weorðan/ OHG sīn, werdan and past participles. Moreover, for our analysis we also include constructions with present participles, as well as other periphrastic constructions formed according to the same pattern (e.g. with becuman, beliben, stan, etc.) to gain a deeper functional understanding of the constructions under consideration. We aim to highlight the synchronic usage of the relevant copula constructions from the viewpoint of verbal aspect, transitivity and word-formation (verbal prefixation), which may help to explain the different developmental paths of English and German with respect to passive formation.]]