A Prototype Study Of The Middle Sentence In English

The middle concept is one of the basic concepts of human experience. It is the result of human cognition of the properties and functions of things in the world, and plays an important role in people's conceptualization of the world. The middle sentence in English has always been an intensively studied topic in linguistic research, and many scholars have studied it from different perspectives. Previous researches describe the syntactic features of the middle sentence in either the movement approach or the non-movement approach, which gives rise to a series of problems. In order to find a better solution to the problems, this thesis, guided by the prototype theory, has made a study of the prototype and non-prototypes of the middle concept and the middle sentence, including the generation and expansion of the middle concept and the middle sentence, the experiential basis of the generation, the cognitive mechanisms of the expansion and the semantic and syntactic features of the prototypes and non-prototypes.The study shows that the prototype of the middle concept refers to the case where an entity brings about or prevents the occurrence of a related event by means of its inherent properties. The key point of the concept is that the entity, by means of its inherent properties, transmits abstract energy, which is absorbed by the entity itself. In the prototype of the middle concept, a 'do-relationship' exists between the entity and the action denoted by the verb. The non-prototypes of the middle concept are the results of the expansion of the prototype. The biggest difference between the prototype and the non-prototypes is that no 'do-relationship' exists between the entity and the action denoted by the verb.The study also shows that when the middle concept is mapped into the language, it generates the middle sentence: the prototype concept generates the prototype sentence; the non-prototype concept generates non-prototype sentences. The linguistic representations of the middle concept are "NP + V + modifier" and "NP + Auxil. + not + V". The prototype middle sentence takes the patient as the subject, while its non-prototypes take instrument, location and setting as their subject. The thesis has also provided explanations to such linguistic phenomena as the general use of the present indefinite tense and the indispensability of the modifier. On the basis of the above discussions, the thesis has made comparisons between the middle concept and the active and passive concepts, as well as comparisons between the middle sentence and the active and passive sentences. The results of the comparisons point to the fact that the middle concept is an independent concept and the middle sentence has its own syntactic features.