A Cognitive Study Of The Middle Construction "NP+Vqilai+AP"

The Middle Construction has become one of the hottest topics in linguistic studies because of the complex interaction between its syntactic structure and semantic features. The property of the middle construction lies in where it has an active form in syntax, but a passive meaning in semantics. Many scholars at abroad have made some achievements on the middle construction in its definitions, classifications, syntactic and semantic features. However, the study on the middle construction in Chinese is not enough, especially on the relationship between constructions and verbs. So this thesis tries to reanalyze the typical middle construction in Chinese based on the corpus within the framework of Goldberg's construction grammar (1995, 2006). It aims to discuss, by combining the qualitative and quantitative research methods, the Chinese middle construction"NP+Vqilai+AP"and its syntactic and semantic features. Moreover, the relationship between the constructional meaning and the verb meaning is discussed. The analysis shows that the Chinese middle construction has three types: (i) Object as Subject: N(object)+V+AP; (ii) Instrument as Subject: N(instrument)+V+AP; (iii) Location as Subject: N(location)+V+AP. And the study also finds out that when the "Vqilai"appears in the construction "NP+Vqilai+AP", the "Vqilai" would change in meaning. These findings of this thesis will provide some ideas for the further study on the Chinese middle construction and also can give some implications for the grammar teaching especially for learners learning Chinese as a second language. Finally, another research field is suggested, where further studies on the patterns of "NP+Vqilai+..."should carried so as to provide more evidences and proofs for the relationship between the constructions and the verbs.