Selectional Restrictions On Adjuncts Of English Middle Construction

The English middle construction, as in the book sells well, is traditionally considered as an expression of passive meaning with the active form and as a construction between the active and the passive. And it has aroused heated debates over its syntactic and semantic features among linguists for about thirty years. Besides, the mechanism of English middle construction’s formation and restrictions on middle verbs were also the foci of many researches. For example, generative linguists explored the semantic and syntactic features of English middle construction through the employment of generative theories such as Projection Principle, Argument Structure, Case Theory, Empty Category, etc. And these fundamental questions on middle construction and middle verbs were analyzed from the perspective of cognitive linguistics as well. Furthermore, English middle construction is also elaborated by the comparison between Chinese and other western languages and some Chinese researchers investigated Chinese learners’ acquisition of English middle constructions.As a matter of fact, Adjuncts of middle verbs are traditionally regarded as the indication of middle construction’s grammaticality. Because the aim of middle construction is to describe properties and features of an object, the middle verb is not the center of the sentence’s structure and thus the semantic center is transferred to the adjunct. So it is significant to investigate features of adjuncts in order to draw the full picture of middle constructions.Although the necessity, classification, and relations between middle verbs, middle constructions and the adjuncts have been discussed in the previous studies, the description, explanation, and selectional restrictions on adjuncts are concisely mentioned merely to strengthen the explanation of middle construction. Nevertheless, there is no unified and systematic description on selectional restrictions on adjuncts. Although there are some corpus studies on adjuncts, most of them discussed the types and features of adjuncts, particularly, the adverbial is considered as the typical adjunct of middle constructions. And those corpus users do not employ exhaustive theories to deduce features of adjuncts and do not summarize the principles of selectional restrictions.This thesis will attempt to explain the selectional restrictions on middle adjuncts based on the previous studies on middle constructions, middle verbs, and the adjuncts. By-applying cognitive linguistic theories, which includes Construction Grammar and Frame Semantics, and Cooperative Principle in pragmatic theories, the thesis will explore the selectional restrictions on adjuncts of three high frequency English verbs read, sell and drive with the aim of establishing full-scale selectional principles of adjuncts in English middle constructions, and of emphasizing the important role the context plays in the selection and distribution of the adjuncts.It is commonly argued that semantic compatibility between subjects verbs, and adjuncts radically determines the validity and acceptance of adjuncts in English middle constructions and this thesis further proposes the other two principles as supplements to this semantic compatibility constraint.And those two selectional principles are:(1) Semantic Selectional Principle which originates from the semantic frame of the verb modified by the adjuncts and from English middle constructions determines the grammatical and semantic types of adjuncts, and that the allocation of percentages or frequencies of various adjuncts is consistent with the prominence or importance of elements in semantic frame of middle verbs.(2) Pragmatic Selectional Principle, which is based on Maxim of Quantity in Cooperative Principle under framework of pragmatics, determines the adjuncts’ usage in different pragmatic conversations and contexts. To be specific, the necessity and ellipsis of middle adjuncts is determined by the focal requirement in pragmatic conversations, and types and distributional structure of middle adjuncts is determined by the genre of contexts. And those two principles are applied simultaneously to the selection of adjuncts of middle verbs in middle constructions.Moreover, differences and similarities of adjuncts of high frequency middle verbs: read, sell, and drive are presented. And the context plays critical roles in the selection and distribution of middle adjuncts. Due to the shortage of the real life contexts in foreign language learning environment, most Chinese English learners overlook the importance and variety of adjuncts of middle verbs and thus this may provide an explanation for the fact that their acquisition of middle constructions is not as good as it is expected in previous second language acquisition studies.