A VP-Shelland Checking Approach To The Generation Of English Middle Construction

The reasons for selecting these topics are as follows: First,with regard to the generation of English Middle Construction,foreign scholars focus on two perspectives:lexical approach and syntactic approach.However,both the two views cannot provide a unified explanation for the generation of various kinds of Middle Constructions.They can not explain how the oblique arguments of location and instrument in the Adjunct Middle Construction move to the position of subject,and obtain the case valuation and theta roles.Most domestic scholars study Middle Construction from the perspective of cognitive grammar.They focused on the restrictions of constructing sentences or syntactic and semantic features of the Middle Construction.Few scholars study the generation of the Middle Construction comprehensively and systematically.Second,since the VP-Shell Theory and Checking Theory are proposed,researchers have done a lot of studies and discussions on these topics.However,these researches and discussions focus on discussing their theoretical framework and principles.They seldom focus on how the syntactic generation operates concretely within the new framework.Finally,only a few scholars study the generative grammar with VP-Shell Theory and Checking Theory.These studies mainly focus on the analysis of the double object construction,contrastive analysis of the English Middle Construction and Chinese Middle Construction,or the differences between the Middle Construction and the Ergative Construction.Few scholars apply the two theories to analyze the generation of English Middle Construction.Therefore,based on the above findings,this paper attempts to apply the VP-Shell Theory and Checking Theory to explore how the middle constructions operate in a simple operating mode,and propose a unified generative mode for the generation of English Middle Construction on the basis of the researches and hypothesis of syntactic theories in recent years.Our research on the generation of English Middle Construction suggests that:(1)the generation of English Middle Construction involves two movements: the light verb v triggers the verb within the lower VP to move;the-interpretable EPP-features of T result in the movement of DP(internal argument).(2)There is an implicit agent,i.e.IMP,in the syntactic expressions of the English Middle Construction.The light verb v selects IMP as its external argument and endows it with agent theta-role.(3)The grammatical subjects in Adjunct Middle Construction obtain the theta roles of location,instrument,etc through the movement of middle verbs.The internal argument obtains case valuation through the mutual assignment of Probe and Goal.For the contributions of this paper: First,this study explains some basic theoretical issues that have not been explained in the previous lexical approach and syntactic approach.Second,this study provides a unified generative model for the three categories of English Middle Constructions,which overcomes the shortcomings of inadequate explanations in the previous studies.Third,starting from the “Principle of Economy”,this study simplifies the theory of linguistics,explores how the Middle Construction operates in a simple mode of operation,and reduces the unnecessary expressions and generative steps in syntactic generation.