The Argument Structure of the Middle Construction and ItsDerivation
Keywords:
middle construction, resultative clause, verb grammaticalization and implication, double verb structureAbstract
Middle constructions are a well-studied topic in linguistics. Based on a summary of the features of middle verbs, this paper proposes that middle constructions are composed of two verbs, of which the first verb, serving as the predicate, denotes an action characteristic of conventional property or features, while the second verb, serving as a complement clause, denotes result. The combination of the two verbs denotes a complete event. Based on this, it is argued that all middle constructions must be of this nature in terms of underlying structure. Once this assumption has been accepted, many long standing puzzles related to middle constructions are solved quite readily.
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Copyright (c) 2021 Yongzhong Yang (Author)
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Linguistic Forum – A Journal of Linguistics is an open-access journal. All articles are published under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) License. Authors retain copyright while granting the journal the right of first publication. The CC BY 4.0 License permits unrestricted use, distribution, reproduction, adaptation, and commercial reuse in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited and appropriate credit is given to the author(s) and the journal.
