Historical development of the English middle construction

The English middle construction, as in the book sells well, is found primarily in spoken context but is rarely mentioned in the prescriptive grammars. While its intriguing syntactic and semantic features have prompted many theoretical articles debating its synchronic analysis, information on the diachronic development of the middle is virtually non-existent. The only consistent information found on the history of the middle is the fact that the construction starts to be productive in Early Present-day English (EPDE).; Based on the syntactic and semantic analysis of the middle, this study explores its history in order to discover why the construction is not found in the previous periods, why it appeared when it did, and why it seems to occur less often than similar structures such as the passive.; This study shows that the middle construction is an innovation, emerging in Middle English and becoming productive in EPDE and Present-day English (PDE). Despite its productivity, the middle is often ignored because it is relatively uncommon due to the fact that it is restricted to specific classes of verbs, namely, activity and accomplishment verbs.; Reasons for the emergence of the English middle construction divide into three aspects: syntactic, semantic, and pragmatic. Syntactically, the construction conforms to the EPDE/PDE grammar, which is typologically different from Old English (OE) grammar. EPDE/PDE are grammatical word order (GWO) languages. OE is a pragmatic word order (PWO) language. The different syntactic structures between OE and PDE produce semantic and pragmatic reasons for the existence of the middle. Semantically, the middle construction arises as a partial compensation for the OE man, which itself disappears with the OE word order. Pragmatically, the construction reflects an attempt by a GWO language to follow the PWO by having non-agent arguments in the subject position which can function as topics. In this respect, the English middle construction is only one PDE syntactic structure that is the consequence of the change in language typology. Other structures such as the tough construction may have developed in parallel with the middle as responses to syntactic changes in the language.