Xjyuk

I have seen the following sentences in a book given to us during our training period at The Regional Institute of English, Bangluru

1. I got married to Priscilla.




2. I got married with Priscilla

According to the book, the first sentence means "I married
Priscilla" and second sentence means "I and Priscilla married at the same time. I married a different girl."

It was also mentioned in the book that even if a person says

“I am getting married with my sister”

we need not raise our brows since the speaker and his sister are getting married at the same time.

I would like to know your responses regarding the information given in the book. Do native speakers really understand the sentences in the same way?

In this situation the object of to refers almost exclusively to who the subject is married to.

A Corpus of Contemporary American English search turns up 5778 collocations of "married to," and all of the ones I've looked at identify a married couple. "I got married to Priscilla" would mean that you and Priscilla became spouses. This is the normative advice given by the Cambridge Dictionary, which says:

We use to, not with, after get married + direct object and be married + direct object:

Why do they recommend that? "with" tends to be used in reference to other people involved in a marriage. "Married with" has 629 results in COCA. Let me show you a sample page of results:

They all refer to marriage with kids or children of varying numbers! This obviously doesn't mean that the subject of the sentence has become the spouse of one or more kids. Instead, with seems to denote someone who is related to that relationship more broadly -

He's happily married with kids

meaning he's (a) married and (b) with kids, or that the kids are a product or an accompaniment of the marriage.

Outside of these results, with can signify several relationships. Kids, of course, may be implied. So might a spouse:

1997 SPOK I met [Princess Diana] really at the beginning when she was married with Prince Charles.

or pets:

2012 MAG I'm married with dogs, no children

or, as your book suggests, another person present in a joint ceremony. (This is uncommon in American or British culture, but would be how I would understand the following):

I am getting married with my sister.

That is why "married to" is a preferred collocation when referring to a spouse. "Married with" would be determined more by context, and more rarely refers to a spouse.

I would definitely agree there's a difference between getting married "to" someone and getting married "with" someone, but for the latter case, a native speaker might think you just misspoke. Marriage ceremonies where multiple couples get married at the same time are very uncommon, so the act of getting married "with" someone is exceedingly rare. So rare, in fact, that it's less likely that the speaker really did get married "with" someone than it is that the speaker didn't really mean "with".

On hearing the second sentence, I would assume the speaker meant married to and made a mistake.

The reason for thinking that is that there are countless possibilities of expressing being married at the same time as someone else. When you want to say that, you mean to emphasise the time aspect, so it seems natural to focus on that.

Some clear ways of expressing that:

We got married on the same day.

We got married at the same time.