A Cognitive Study Of English And Chinese Middle Constructions

English middle construction is a unique language phenomenon in that the subject position is occupied by the theme although the verb is in the active form. There are some selectional restrictions in the formation of middle construction. Many previous studies of middles are inadequate at the observational, descriptive and interpretive levels, which is caused by the incomprehensive understanding of middles and the lack of a rigid definition. As a result, many sentences that should be regarded as middles are excluded, and many other sentences which are only superficially similar to middles are included in this category. The analysis and conclusion based on such inadequate observation and description are naturally implausible. The middle construction is deeply cognitively motivated, whose essence can only be captured from the cognitive approach. Such a cognitive definition of middles will help precisely target and set the boundary to our studies free from disputes. It will also help us have an overall picture of middles and their syntactic and semantic features, which will certainly help keep the middle studies on the right track.Middle construction exists in many languages. In contrast,the study has just begun in Chinese. Based on the previous academic achievements, this paper conducts a contrastive study on the syntactic, semantic and pragmatic features in English and Chinese middle constructions. Causes for the differences are also analyzed and the cognitive motivation of the middle construction is interpreted. At the end of the paper some useful translation stragdies will be given.