A Corpus-based Study Of Adverbs In The English Middle Construction

The English middle construction, which involves a complex interplay between syntaxand semantics, is one of the most heatedly discussed topics in the field of linguistics. Thetraditional research on the English middle construction focuses on the syntactic and thelexical basis. It is mainly centered on two topics: the derivation of the English middleconstruction and the aspectual properties of the verb in it. But previous studies offered nosatisfactory account for the English middle construction. It seems that the traditional methodcannot provide a solid explanation for the derivation of the English middle construction andthe special characteristics of the middle adverb. Starting from the angle of collocation theory,the author of this thesis intends to shed a new light on the study of the English middleconstruction. Collocation was initially introduced by Firth in1957. He holds that the lexicalmeaning of any given word is achieved by multiple statements of meaning at different levels,not only at the orthographic level, phonological level, grammatical level, but also at thecollocational level. There are collocation rules embedded not only in different words, but alsoin the sentence structure. As a sentence, there are also some collocation rules that the Englishmiddle construction has to abide by.Beginning with the importance of the present study as well as the inadequacy ofprevious studies of the English middle construction, this thesis approaches the English middleconstruction from the perspective of the collocation theory. With the help of the corpus,authentic data concerning the English middle construction have been obtained and analyzed.Based on a large number of examples, this thesis is mainly centered on the exploration ofhow the middle adverb is properly used. The author also tries to find certain pattern ofcollocation in the English middle construction from both the structural and cognitive point ofview. Guided by the collocation theory, this thesis explores in detail the formation of theEnglish middle construction and its collocation. Finally, the author draws the followingconclusions:(1) The way of choosing adverbs to modify the whole English middleconstruction is based on this principle: the adverb is always constrained by the semantic characteristics of the collocated verb and the semantic characteristic of the object that thesubject refers to;(2) The event and action described in the English middle constructioncannot be separated from each other;(3) The event expressed in the English middleconstruction can be regarded as a whole event that can be easily triggered in human brain.It is an attempt of the author to explain the English middle construction by applying thecollocation theory. The significance of this research lies in the fact that it provides languagelearners and researchers with new starting points to understand the formation of the Englishmiddle construction.