A Study Of English Middle Construction Acquisition By Chinese Efl Learners

Middle construction, refers to a kind of language pattern which is described as sentence pattern with active morphology but passive meaning in the traditional grammar, also named “patient-subject construction”, “medio-passives”, “activo-passives” etc.. Middle construction, which is distinctive from active construction and passive construction, involves intricate relationship on syntactic, semantic and pragmatic levels. It is proved in current accounts that middle semantics remain constant even though languages differ in different syntactic structure they employ. And it is undoubtedly that middle semantics possesses cross-language universality. Therefore, it has always been the hot topic of current linguistic research.This paper mainly studies the acquisition of middle construction by different levels of Chinese EFL learners, based on the Interface Hypothesis and syntactic and semantic features of English middle construction. The previous studies are mainly about the English middle construction’s cognitive analysis; the study of syntax-semantic interface; genitive study under the minimalist approach and effects of L1 upon L2 acquisition of English middle construction. But there are seldom studies on the acquisition of English middle construction by Chinese EFL learners. So this paper aims to give effective research on the acquisition difficulties of Chinese EFL learners in different levels in order to analyze the reasons of acquisition difficulties. This paper will study three questions as follows:(1) How well Chinese learners of English acquire English middle constructions?(2) What is the developmental pattern of the acquisition of English middle constructions by Chinese learners of English?(3) To what extent may different types of middle construction restrictions pose learning difficulties to Chinese EFL learners?The participants are non-English sophomores, juniors of English majors and postgraduates of English majors. The total is 90, and 30 for each group, and the research tool is 60 judgment sentences and 20 translation sentences. And the results of research show that:(1) In general, there are acquisition difficulties of English middle construction by Chinese EFL learners. It illustrates that they don’t acquire middle constructions completely.(2) The students who are in the higher level will acquire more effectively. That is to say, through effective study, the acquisition can become better.(3) The study also shows that the acquisition of the middle sentences of restriction of NP is the best while the acquisition of the middle sentences of restriction of XP is the worst.