Abstract
Two of the most frequent verbs of the Swedish language, få (with the basic meaning ‘receive’) and bli (with the basic meaning ‘become’), share several characteristics. Both verbs are polysemic: få can express possession, permission, prohibition, causativity, inchoativity, and succeeded attempts; bli can express inchoativity, durativity, and future time. Both verbs take part in a variety of different syntactic constructions, such as functioning as a passive auxiliary. Depending on the meaning and function, they can be described as more lexical elements or rather grammatical: metaphorically speaking, få and bli can hence be seen as either building blocks or mortar. Together with the high frequency and the semantic and syntactic complexity, the two verbs share an additional common trait: they are the inchoative counterpart to the two most basic verbs of the Swedish language, ha ‘have’ and vara ‘be’, respectively. Whilst there exist studies covering the different meanings and functions of få, an equivalent study of the verb bli is currently lacking. This article presents a mapping of both verbs, followed by a brief reflection on their inchoative nature.
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