Middle Construction In English-chinese Learner’s Dictionary: Definition Under User’s Perspective

Traditionally, English middle construction are believed to take an active verb morphology and passive argument structure, and thus poses a challenge for Chinese EFL learners. As an indispensable tool in the acquisition and production of English language, an English-Chinese learner’s dictionary (ECLD) should attend to learners’ needs in every respect. However, current ECLDs have paid little attention to learners’ needs in the representation of middle construction. In light of status quo, the present study is conducted from user’s perspective, one that pays a great attention to the proc-ess of language acquisition. Different from traditional grammar or formal syntax, the present study adopt the view that regards middle construction as dynamic modal, which is base-generated at Lexical Conceptual Level through the process of disposi-tion ascription. The present study aims to make improvements on the representation of the middle constructions in ECLDs and help Chinese EFL learners to overcome their difficulties.At first, the formation, the selectional constraints on verbs and adverbials and se-mantic features of middle construction alone with other factors affecting the accept-ability of middle constructions are analyzed. Then, with the help of British National Corpus (BNC) and questionnaires, Chinese EFL learners’difficulties in acquiring and using middle constructions are identified and their needs concluded. Finally, after survey of three constructions in four ECLDs, improvements are made on the basis of Multidimensional Definition Theory (MDT). In addition, specific sample representa-tion is proposed.Major findings include:1) Chinese EFL learners have difficulties in acquiring middle constructions due to insufficient language input, overgeneralization and cross-inguistic expressional differences.2) The representation of middle constructions in ;urrent ECLDs is not appropriate or satisfactory enough. Features of middle construc-ions are not shown clearly and some necessary information is not provided.3) The presentation of middle constructions in ECLDs can be improved on the basis of MDT. A variety of devices can be adopted to present middle constructions.