| English middle construction takes an active verb morphology and passivelikeargument structure, and thus poses a challenge for Chinese EFL learners.English-Chinese learner’s dictionaries (henceforth ECLDs) should be designed withconsideration of learners’ needs because they are important tools in Englishacquisition and production. However, current ECLDs pay scarce attention to learners’needs in the representation of middle constructions. Therefore, the present study isconducted from the perspective of the cognitive grammar, which pays more attentionto the language acquisition process than the traditional grammar approach or theformal syntactic approach, aiming at making improvements on the representation ofthe middle constructions in ECLDs and helping Chinese EFL learners to overcometheir difficulties.At first, middle construction and virtual reality, selectional constraints on verbsand adverbials, conditions on middle formation and other factors affecting theacceptability of middle constructions are analyzed. Then with the help of BritishNational Corpus (henceforth BNC) and a questionnaire, Chinese EFL learners’difficulties in acquiring and using middle constructions are identified and their needsare concluded. Finally, after a survey of middle constructions in four ECLDs,improvements are made on the basis of Multidimensional Definition Theory(henceforth MDT), in addition, specific sample representation is proposed. Majorfindings include:1) Chinese EFL learners have difficulties in acquiring middleconstructions, which are due to negative transfer from Chinese, cross linguisticcognitive difference and overgeneralization.2) The representation of middleconstructions in current ECLDs is not appropriate and satisfactory. Features of middleconstructions are not shown clearly and some necessary information is not provided.3)The representation of middle constructions in ECLDs can be improved on the basis ofMDT.Avariety of devices can be adopted to present middle constructions. |
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