Middlesex

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Perhaps perverse, but it seems like Middlesex would be an excellent novel in which to study the [i]middle voice[i].

On a first reading, I intend to pull all the instances of "get" that I don't miss. Afterwards, though, it's clear that Book I has a very interesting number of "pathetic fallacies" or "paysage d'état d'âme", doors, eyes, fires, all with a sense of sentient purpose !


Occurences of get

Finite human subject

Narrative

  • Book I § The Silver Spoon § 11 | We may get another boy
  • Book I § The Silver Spoon § 11 | Now my mother gets up from the so-called love seat.
  • Book I § The Silver Spoon § 11 | Now my father gets up to make his rounds, turning out light, locking doors.
  • Book I § The Silver Spoon § 13 | Now, in the church basement, she told Chapter Eleven to run off and play with the other children while she got a cup of coffee to restore herself.
  • Book I § The Silver Spoon § 14 | He was trying to fill a coffee cup, but once he got the tap open he couldn't get it closed.
  • Book I § The Silver Spoon § 17 | Awakened by my parents rushing off to the hospital, he'd gotten out of bed and gone downstairs to make himself a cup of coffee.


  • Book I § Matchmaking § 19 | (Her memoirs, which end shortly before her suicide, make unsatisfactory reading, and it was after finishing them years ago that I first got the idea to write my own.)
  • Book I § Matchmaking § 20 | I'm the final clause in a periodic sentence, and that sentence begins a long time ago, in another language, and you have to read it from the beginning to get to the end, which is my arrival.
  • Book I § Matchmaking § 20 | She gets really fat again. (narrator rewinds the tape through pregnancy)
  • Book I § Matchmaking § 24 | At present, black silk ribbons were tied around the braids, too, making them even more imposing, if you got to see them, which few people did.
  • Book I § Matchmaking § 30 | He knew that he was supposed to shout, to act offended, to pretend to take his business elsewhere. But he had gotten such a late start; the closing bell was about to sound.
  • Book I § Matchmaking § 31 | He let himself get cajoled into playing, just one, then lost and had to go double or nothing.
  • Book I § Matchmaking § 32-3 | Hung over and feverish, Lefty told himself that his sister was right: it was time for him to get married.
    • tough-structure
  • Book I § Matchmaking § 33 | He would have children and stop going down to Bursa and little by little he's change; he'd get older; everything he felt now would fade into memory and then into nothing.
    • future in the past, complement includes comparative head -er.


  • Book I § An Immodest Proposal § 43 | Afraid to get out of bed, he sent the barber away, forgetting his morning shave.
  • Book I § An Immodest Proposal § 49 | When you got away from the quay you could almost forget that there was a crisis on.
  • Book I § An Immodest Proposal § 49 | When all his money was gone, Lefty got up and said with disgusted anger, "Can I leave now?"


  • Book I § The Silk Road § 68 | We Greeks get married in circles, to impress upon ourselves the essential matrimonial facts: that to be happy you have to find variety in repetition, that to go forward you have to come back where you began.
  • Book I § The Silk Road § 71-2 | Instead of getting to know each other, [...] Desdemona and Lefty tried to defamiliarize themselves with one another.
  • Book I § The Silk Road § 74 | Literate, married to only one person (albeit a sibling), democratically inclined, mentally stable, and authoritatively deloused, my grandparents saw no reason why they would have trouble </i>getting through</i>.
  • Book I § The Silk Road § 76 | "Maybe I could get you a blanket?"
  • Book I § The Silk Road § 76 | "You won't get the chance", said the captain and to prove his point, pulled the lifeboat's tarp completely away.


  • Book II § Henry Ford's English Melting Pot § 82 | one of [the five wigs Sophie Sasson made from Desdemona's cut hair] was later bought by Betty Ford, post White House and rehab, so that we got to see it on television once, during Richard Nixon's funeral, my grandmother's hair, sitting on the ex-President's wife's head.
  • Book II § Henry Ford's English Melting Pot § 83 | But just imagine it in those days! Grand Trunk! Telephones in a hundred shipping offices ringing away, still a relatively new sound; and merchandise being sent east and west; passengers arriving and departing, having coffee in the Palm Court or getting their shoes shined, the wing tips of banking, the cap toes of parts supply, the saddle shoes of rum-running.
    • excellent paragraph for studying voice/-ing/-ed interaction with various lexemes (ring, have, get, arrive, depart) of different Aktionsart. /getting N Ved/  :hm:
  • Book II § Henry Ford's English Melting Pot § 83 | A secret kept, in other words, only by the loosest definition, so that now -- as I get ready to leak the information myself -- I feel only a slight twinge of filial guilt.

Conversation / Reported speech

  • Book I § The Silver Spoon § 15 | "Did you get burned?"
  • Book I § The Silver Spoon § 15 | "He gets into everything."


  • Book I § Matchmaking § 23 | "Ev'ry morning, ev'ry evening, ain't we got fun"
  • Book I § Matchmaking § 23 | "In the meantime, in-between time, ain't we got fun"
  • Book I § Matchmaking § 23 | He was still singing -- "Not much money, Oh! but honey" -- fixing his cuff links, parting his hair; but then he looked up and saw his sister -- ain't we got" -- and pianissimo now -- fun" -- fell silent.
  • Book I § Matchmaking § 24 | With a steady, determined voice, he'd answered, "I'm trying to get that feeling."
  • Book I § Matchmaking § 36 | Lucille's father welcomed him, then said, "We'll leave you two alone. To get acquainted."


  • Book I § An Immodest Proposal § 43 | "Where can we get a boat? In Constantinople?"
  • Book I § An Immodest Proposal § 49 | "Maybe we'll be lucky tomorrow and get a ride. And when we get to Symrna, we'll get a boat to Athens" -- his voice tight, funny sounding, a few tones higher than normal -- "and from Athens we'll get a boat to America."
  • Book I § An Immodest Proposal § 49 | "We're going to get out of here. [...] We're going to get out of here".


  • Book I § The Silk Road § 69 | "From what I hear, Tilden doesn't just play tennis with his protégés, if you get my drift.
    • you = recipient/beneficiary argument


  • Book II § Henry Ford's English Melting Pot § 81-2 | "To the Conductor: Please show bearer where to change and where to get off, as this person does not speak English. [...]"
  • Book II § Henry Ford's English Melting Pot § 84 | "You got married fast enough."
  • Book II § Henry Ford's English Melting Pot § 84 | "We heard about the fire. Terrible. I was so worried until I </i>got your letter</i>."
  • Book II § Henry Ford's English Melting Pot § 85 | "They don't get along?"
    • standard US reciprocal // UK = get on // unlike French which requires a manner (bien/mal s'entendre) and in which explicit pointing would be awkward/redundant, English accepts the explicit naming of the agents in a with-clause. ... with each other
  • Book II § Henry Ford's English Melting Pot § 85 | "Now about the rent. You just got married?"
  • Book II § Henry Ford's English Melting Pot § 85 | "I didn't get a dowry."
  • Book II § Henry Ford's English Melting Pot § 85 | "Now about the rent. Why did you get married then?"
  • Book II § Henry Ford's English Melting Pot § 85 | "if you don't get paid, don't get married?"

Equivalent to have-possession

  • Book I § The Silk Road § 73 | "He's got his own business, right?"

Non-human subject // Unspecified agent subject

Narrative

  • Book I § The Silver Spoon § 6 | In the spring of 1959 when discussions of my fertilization got under way, my mother couldn't foresee that women would soon be burning their brassieres by the thousand.
  • Book I § The Silver Spoon § 15 | Standing at the window, my brother wanted more than anything to believe in an American God who got resurrected on the right day.


  • Book I § Matchmaking § 31 | His prayer begins with words he learned as a child [...], but soon it vers off, becoming personal with [...] and then turning a little accusatory, praying [...] but getting abject finally with [...] eyes squeezed shut, hands bending the derby's brim, the words dripting up with the incense toward a Christ-in-progress.


  • Book I § An Immodest Proposal § 54 | [T]here are other faces pressed to slats, Armenian, Bulgarian and Greek eyes peeking out of hideaways and attics to get a look at the conqueror and divine his intentions; [...]
  • Book II § Henry Ford's English Melting Pot § 79 | [...] previous to the day a young Henry ford knocked down his workshop wall because, in devising his "quadricycle," he'd thought of everything but how to get the damn thing out; [...]
    • he and the null-subject of the infinitival need not be the same, or human.
  • Book II § Henry Ford's English Language Melting Port § 87 | Sourmelina insisted on __ getting a porter to carry their suitcases to the car[.]
  • Book II § Henry Ford's English Melting Pot § 79 | Outide Hudson's Deparment Store the crowd was ten thick, jostling to get in the newfangled revolving doors.
    • resultative

Conversation

  • Book I § An Immodest Proposal § 47 | The wound was on the man's thumb, where the nail was missing. [--]"How did this happen?" [--]"First the Greeks invaded," the refugee said. "Then the Turks invaded back. My hand got in the way."
  • Book I § An Immodest Proposal § 52 | "Look at those poor wretches. Left to fend for themselves. when word gets out about the Greek commissioner's leaving, it's going to be pandemonium."
  • Book II § Henry Ford's English Language Melting Port § 87 | "Just my luck. Soon as I leave the village, things get interesting
  • Book II § Henry Ford's English Language Melting Port § 87 | "To get ___ out of that country, Des, I would have married a cripple."
    • It seems to me that I is more the object than the subject of the purpose clause.