English Middles

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. The agent of the middle verb is covert or realized as for-PP when overt.The thesis presents the basic pattern of English middles—DP + Verb +Adverbial—together with its variants. The semantic properties of this structure include non-eventiveness that focuses on the properties of the theme, inherent agentivity, arbitrariness of the implied agent and modality. There are two possible meanings attached to the middle structure: habitual middles that are based on repeated habitual events and capacity middles that are not.By analyzing the view that English middles are derived by lexical means the thesis points out its problems: the belief that all agents in middles are implied is wrong and it is not reasonable to classify middle verb as intransitive verb when it is able to assign two θ roles. The problems lead to the account that middle derivation must involve syntactic movement. After a comparison with passivization and discussion of the realization of the arbitrary logical subject and the movement of the theme, it is maintained that the theme is generated at VP-complement, the internal argument has to move to the subject...