A Cognitive Analysis Of English Middle Constructions: Energy Transmission

As a unique language phenomenon, the English Middle Construction (henceforth EMC) has been a widely discussed topic in linguistics in recent decades. A great many grammarians and linguists have attempted to define and explain it from various aspects after Keyser and Roeper (1984). There are two main approaches in the traditional research of EMCs. The research on EMCs focuses on the lexical or the syntactic basis. The former holds that formation of EMCs is a pre-syntax process which occurs in the lexicon whereas the latter argues that this process should be dealt with in the syntax because the noun phrase behind the verb must move to the subject position to get case. Great achievements have been made in their studies for this construction, but problems still exist in their explanation, for example, almost all the linguists agree that there are implied agents in EMCs, however, as far as I know, seldom of them try to find out how the actions denoted by the verbs are exerted by these implied agents in EMCs, that is, how the energy is transmitted from the implied agents to other entities.Langacker's theory of energy transmission, which is widely used to explain sentence structures, provides a new angle for the analysis of EMCs. In this study, an analysis of EMCs is provided from the cognitive point of view. It analyzes the underlying cognitive basis for the formation of EMCs through the explanation of energy transmission during the formation of EMCs. Since what I explore is the energy transmitted in EMCs, i.e., the resource or force transmitted in EMCs, I divide EMCs into three types according to the resources of energy: internal resource EMCs, external resource EMCs and natural resource EMCs.The analysis of energy transmission in action chains indicates that during the formation of EMCs, there is energy transmitted from the action initiator. The energy source originates from three channels, one being the special features that distinguish the entity from the others (internal resource), the other being the energy transmitted from the action initiator (external resource), and still another being the power gained from the nature (natural resource). The three resources are the cognitive basis for the formation of EMCs. The internal resource is the driving cognitive force for the formation of EMCs. Without the source of energy, the formation of EMCs would not be possible.