Interpretation Of English Middle Construction From The Perspective Of Canonical Event Model

As a special construction in English language, English Middle Construction has always been a topic which attracts wide attention of foreign and domestic scholars. Due to the fact that English Middle Construction involves very complicated linguistic knowledge, scholars have carried out researches related to it from different perspectives such as Semantics and Syntax, and obtained plentiful achievements. Based on these previous studies, this thesis aims to interpret English Middle Construction from a cognitive perspective of “Canonical Event Model”. In this thesis, different types of English Middle Construction will be analyzed to figure out differences of their inner cognitive mechanisms. The research in this thesis belongs to descriptive research and the main achievements are as follows:According to the differences of subjects, English Middle Constructions can be categorized into five types: patient-subject, instrument-subject, material-subject, experiencer-subject as well as location-subject English Middle Construction. The former three types of English Middle Construction can be analyzed by Action Chain theory. Their “energy heads” are all served by “implicit agents” which possess the property of genericity, and their “energy tails” are all taken by the “patients”. The differences of these three types of English Middle Construction lie in the fact that their roles of patients are served by “subject”, “generic implicit patient” and “entity made of the subject” respectively. Experiencer-subject English Middle Construction should be analyzed by Mental Interaction Chain. Its “energy head” is taken by the subject, that is, the “experiencer”, and its “energy tail” is served by the “generic implicit experienced”. Location-subject English Middle Construction should be analyzed according to Stage Model. In this type of English Middle Construction, the subject “location” serves as the “setting(stage)” of the whole event. In addition to the “implicit agent”, sometimes, there may be also an “implicit patient” in the sentence. They serve as “participants(actors)” in the Stage Model and act within the range of “setting”.Based on the differences of predicates, English Middle Constructions can be classified as accomplishment-predicate and activity-predicate English Middle Construction. Firstly, this thesis explains the reason for the impossibility of achievement verbs and state verbs to become middle verbs by adopting Canonical Event Model. Based on it, this thesis analyzed two types of English Middle Construction and pointed out that their differences lie in the fact that there is an ending point in the final stage of accomplishment-predicate English Middle Construction, while there is no inherent end point in the stages of activity-predicate English Middle Construction.From the perspective of adjunct differences, English Middle Construction can be classified as facility-adjunct, achievement-adjunct and comparison-adjunct English Middle Construction. Canonical Event Model explained the differences among these three types of English Middle Constructions in detail: the facility adjunct describes the whole event and needs to be connected to the whole action chain, while achievement adjunct and comparison adjunct only describe the final result of the whole action and needs to be connected to the end point of action chain. In addition, both the facility scale and achievement scale have positive and negative poles, while the comparison scale usually has a positive pole.As is discussed above, this research provides the readers with a new cognitive perspective for the interpretation of English Middle Construction. It can help readers know more about the inner mechanisms of different types of English Middle Constructions and enrich their knowledge related to English Middle Construction. As a result, readers can not only distinguish the inner differences of English Middle Constructions, but also distinguish English Middle Construction from the other constructions. Meanwhile, this thesis can help readers apply English Middle Construction in their daily communication more reasonably and thus, facilitate the development of linguistic diversity.