Structural Analysis Of Chinese Middle Constructions

After reviewing many relevant books and articles, we find middle constructions(in English sentences like "The floor paints easily", in Chinese sentences like "Zhe-xie che kaiqilai hen rongyi"(It is very easy to drive these cars)) are worthy of study. Middle constructions present the active form but indicate the passive meaning and thus show us the conflict between form and meaning. It has also been noted that many languages other Chinese and English have middle constructions. Middle constructions have both the universality among different languages and their uniqueness in specific languages.In previous study, scholars have done some research on middle constructions. Basing on their findings, we have studied the three components of Chinese middle constructions (grammatical subject, verb, supplement component) and hope to deepen the understanding about middle constructions. In the introduction, we introduce the earliest study about middle constructions in English and Chinese, reviews the literature and then introduce our research method and research significance. In the second part of the thesis, we introduce the definition standard of middle constructions presented by both foreign and domestic scholars, and according to these we define the Chinese middle constructions. In the third part of the thesis, we compare the classification about verbal process structure in English and in Chinese and research the relationship between Chinese middle constructions and verbal structure process. In the fourth part of the thesis, we search Chinese middle constructions in corpus, describe and study the grammatical subjects in these sentences. In the fifth part of the thesis, we classify and count the supplement component in above-mentioned Chinese middle constructions and research the reason why Chinese middle constructions have the mandatory requirement for supplement component. In the sixth part of the thesis, we use the argument structure theory to study how Chinese middle constructions come into being.In the thesis, we combine theory and living example, supplement qualitative analysis with quantitative analysis, and arrive at the conclusion as listed below.1. Sentence pattern "NP+Vqilai+supplement component" are Chinese middle constructions. In the pattern, if supplement component refers to NP, then the whole structure is not a middle construction. If supplement component refers to "Vqilai" or implicit agent, then the whole structure maybe a middle construction depending on specific analysis.2. Chinese state and achievement verbs cannot undergo middle formation while Chinese activity and accomplishment verbs that have the semantic feature [+volitional] and [+transitive] can undergo middle formation.3. Subject in Chinese middle constructions has four categories: patient subject, instrument subject, locative subject and resultative subject. There are more Chinese middle constructions which belong to the patient subject category. Subject in Chinese middle constructions is usually definite and inanimate. With regard to the sentence category, Chinese middle constructions are patient-subject constructions.4. The grammatical structure of Chinese middle constructions’supplement component has three categories:adjectives, onomatopoeia, phrases and minor sentences. The semantics of Chinese middle constructions’supplement component also has two categories:indicate the difficulty level or indicate the value evaluation. The reason why Chinese middle constructions require supplement component is:grammatically, Chinese middle constructions require supplement component to give the constructions an ending; semantically, Chinese middle constructions require supplement component to provide necessary new information; cognitively, verbs in Chinese middle constructions belong to basic-level category and thus require supplement component to afford additional description. In addition, since Chinese does not resemble English which has other alternative methods to form middle constructions, then adding supplement component is the only method.5. Chinese middle constructions derive from the ellipsis of agent in the constructions "NP+agent+Vqilai+supplement component". First of all, the identification of the prototype of Chinese middle constructions can assist to explain Chinese middle constructions’characteristics:the responsibility of the grammatical subject, the reference of the implicit agent and the dispositional generics of the whole constructions. Furthermore, knowing how middle constructions come into being help explain why in Chinese middle constructions adjectives are non-volitional while verbs are volitional. At last, the above identification can provide new points when analyze the relationship between patient-subject constructions and sentences which omit agent subject. All in all, by using living examples to provide more illustration to research grammatical subject and supplement component and by combining qualitative and quantitative analysis in our study, we hope to uncover more characteristics of Chinese middle constructions.