Middle Constructions In German Language-a Multiperspective Research

Middle construction is one of the syntactic constructions, which are already marginalized in western languages. With an active syntactic form it contains however several other semantic expressions, such as passivity, status, evaluation, generic reference and modality etc., meanwhile performing a strong flexibility and productivity in our pragmatic daily use. The traditional grammar interpretation has been challenged. What’s more, this special syntactic phenomenon has brought many foreign language learners difficulties rather than curiousness in front of new language knowledge. Therefore, a related systematical research on this particular construction is very necessary.Since middle of the last century this special form has begun to cause linguists’ attention. Along with the development of various grammar theories, interpretations about middle constructions are continuously presented. Especially in the recent years, a research from different perspectives, namely a multiperspective research, is becoming a main trend. On the basis of previous achievements, this thesis continues to explore middle construction from different perspectives and tries to answer following two questions:first, a number of unexplained problems from special sentences are often encountered within a single theoretical perspective, so how do we deal with these problems? Second, there’s no doubt that similarity between the target language and mother tongue can bring convenience for foreign language learners and what kind of similar characters does the German middle construction have with the Chinese counterpart? In order to answer those questions, this paper will make a further analysis after traditionally analyzing middle construction’s basic features, mainly resorting to two different grammatical theories:Chomsky’s government&binding theory (GB-theory) and Goldberg’s construction grammar, This paper argues that while the internal argument moves to the subject position of the projection, the German reflexive pronoun "sich" is absolute no argument or lexical quasi-argument of the verb, but a clitic that ist provided by the middle construction itself and as a middle feature changes the identities of the verb. Knotty problems, such as motivation for the obligatory adverbial modifier and the uncommon variant, can also be partly solved with help from construction, a superior grammar unit beyond word, phrase and sentence.Comparison with similar constructions is also a part of multiperspective research. In this thesis, there is not only comparison with competitor forms such as anticausative, reflexive resultative and ACI-lassen-constructions, but also a cross-linguistic comparison between German and Chinese middle constructions. Both middle constructions in spite of massive language differences show us amazing similarities: using morpheme as a middle feature in the construction and executing a process of a related lexicalization, which means good news for further comparison research.Moreover in terms of foreign language teaching it is great for learners to find such similarities, so that special form can be easily comprehended. In conclusion, it is believed that such a multiperspective research is more scientific, completed and worthy of expecting.