A Reconsideration Of English Middle Construction

Middle Construction with the common syntactic structure of [NP+V+Adv.] hasbeen the hot topic for arguments among many scholars. However, there is noagreement reached on the basic knowledge of the Necessary and Sufficient Conditionwhich is the most fundamental basis of any scientific study of Middle Construction.And arguments lie both on the generation way of Middle Construction and thetransitivity of middle verb. There are two representative groups on the generation: Thelexical group and the syntactic group. Even among the same group, arguments existon the existence of external argument and the necessity of manner adverb. Therefore,it is emergent to draw a clear line for the middle construction and only study in thesame scope will be valuable and persuasive.In the former parts, the author contrives to study the concrete features of MiddleConstruction through comparison between the confusing pairs of Middle Constructionand Passive Construction as well as Middle Construction and UnaccusativeConstruction. Then the author points out fatal disadvantages in the theories ofprevious study and resorts to the basic logic frame of human language proposed byProfessor Zhao Yanchun (Zhao Yanchun,2010; Wang Juan,2009) as an effective andpowerful theory in analyzing Middle Construction.Under the theory of basic logic frame of human language, analyses on thegeneration and the necessary and sufficient syntactic elements of Middle Constructionhave been done and the middle verb has been redefined as independent intransitiveverb which bears a relation of isomorphism with the transitive verb in the samemorphology. Conclusion has been reached that Middle Construction is base-generateddue to the features of middle verb already defined in lexicon without any syntacticoperation of movement and there is no external argument either in syntactic structureor in logic.