A Corpus-based Comparative Study Of English And Chinese Middle Construction

Middle construction is a special language phenomenon which exists in many languages.In recent years,it has drawn extensive attention in the field of linguistics.Previous domestic and abroad studies mainly analyze middle construction from semantic,syntactic,generative and cognitive perspectives.Most researches are qualitative,with introspective methods while few have quantitative comparative researches based on corpora.Therefore,the theoretical hypothesis of middle construction remains to be verified.Based on the British National Corpus(BNC)and Beijing Language and Culture University Chinese Corpus(BCC),the research adopts qualitative and quantitative methods to compare and analyze English and Chinese middle constructions in order to examine the similarities and differences of the components in the middle construction,expound the relationships among the components and further explore its operational mechanism under the theoretical framework of construction grammar and grammatical metonymy.In the research,it would reveal the characteristics of this special language phenomenon by comparison from the perspective of language typology.The research focuses on the following three questions:(1)What are the similarities and differences among the three components(NP,VP and AP)in English and Chinese middle construction?(2)What is the relationship among the three components,NP,VP and AP respectively in English and Chinese middle construction?(3)How does the operational mechanism work in English and Chinese middle construction from the perspective of cognitive linguistics?The findings are as follows:(1)NP,VP and AP are generally the three necessary components in both English and Chinese middle construction.The similarities lie in following aspects: NP could be patient or location noun in middle construction;Pronoun could be used in the position of subject.It refers to noun which occurs in the preceding text.VP is in an active form and it is transitive verb which expresses certain activity,but it shows intransitivity in middle construction.AP could express the internal attributes of NP.An uncertain and arbitrary agent is implicit in middle construction.Thus,whoever the agent is,the meaning of middle construction would not be affected.Meanwhile the differences mainly lie in the aspects that if NP occurs in the preceding text,the vacancy of NP is allowed in Chinese middle construction.However,NP couldn‘t be omitted in English middle construction.Chinese middle verb is activity verb and it needs to be collocated with the grammaticalized ―qilai‖.While accomplishment verb could be used as middle verb in English.Adjectives expressing facility or quality are usually used as AP in Chinese,while adverbs expressing value or manner are usually used as AP in English middle construction.(2)From the perspective of construction grammar,―NP+VP+AP‖ should be regarded as a whole.The relationship among the three components in both English and Chinese middle construction is mutually restricted.The similarities lie in that the attributes of NP could be embodied in its qualia role and NP has selectional constraints of VP in middle construction.The semantic of AP could orient to the attribute of NP.The differences are mainly reflected in following aspects.In English middle construction,AP is usually adverb which modifies VP.While in Chinese middle construction,the semantic of adjective as AP could orient to ―VP‖ or the activity which is represented in ―VP+NP‖.(3)Grammatical metonymy plays an important role in the operational mechanism of middle construction.But the metonymic cognitive model is different.The metonymic model of English middle construction is ―action for result‖.However,in Chinese middle construction,the metonymic model is ―action for manner of action‖.The cognitive motivation is the prominence of non-agent role and the weakness of agent in middle construction.The study makes cross-linguistic comparison between English and Chinese middle construction from the perspective of cognitive linguistics based on English and Chinese corpora.It intends to help language learners understand and master the special language phenomenon better and discovers the cognitive operational mechanism of middle construction in terms of ordered heterogeneity.Due to the limitation of time and energy constraints,the research is limited to synchronic research.In the future research,if the synchronic research could be combined with the diachronic research,the research will be more comprehensive.