Despite its exceptional frequency and versatility GET has never been a focus of research in
its entire variability which goes from lexical to grammatical uses nor in large amounts of
data from different varieties of English. The present corpus-based study deals with over 11 600
tokens of GET in written and spoken language from three varieties of English and thus provides
new insights for variationist linguistics. Firstly it offers a comprehensive
semasiological-syntactic analysis of GET i.e. an analysis of all its meanings and all the
constructions into which it enters suggesting ten categories as being necessary for its
complete description. Secondly it contributes to the understanding of factors that are at work
in variation in World Englishes and lead to quantitative differences between regional standard
varieties. Thus the present study demonstrates that the use of GET in the New Englishes
analysed is less affected by substrate effects than by the effects of Second Language
Acquisition and the varying influence of British and American English norms. Moreover it can
be shown that the New Englishes display more grammatical uses of GET than does British English.
