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Understanding Middle Constructions in Languages

This document discusses personal middle constructions, which are viewed as an argument structure alternation that occurs in several Indo-European languages. While middles exhibit different morphological markings and syntactic behaviors across languages, the document pursues a semantic approach, analyzing middles as a kind of generic sentence expressing dispositional properties. It extends this discussion to impersonal and adjunct middles that appear to challenge the semantic analysis.

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Anahí Lopez Favilli
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8 views1 page

Understanding Middle Constructions in Languages

This document discusses personal middle constructions, which are viewed as an argument structure alternation that occurs in several Indo-European languages. While middles exhibit different morphological markings and syntactic behaviors across languages, the document pursues a semantic approach, analyzing middles as a kind of generic sentence expressing dispositional properties. It extends this discussion to impersonal and adjunct middles that appear to challenge the semantic analysis.

Uploaded by

Anahí Lopez Favilli
Copyright
© All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd

The landscape of middle constructions

The topic of this course is the so-called (personal) middle construction, exemplified
from English in (1):
(1) This fabric washes easily.
Personal middle constructions are normally viewed as an argument structure
alternation, and occur in several Indo-European languages (including Romance and
Germanic languages, as well as Greek); however, across languages middles do not
exhibit the same morphology, nor do they behave in the same way syntactically. In
terms of morphology, some languages do not mark middles at all (English, Dutch),
others employ a reflexive clitic or pronoun (French, German), and yet others rely on
non-active verbal morphology (Greek). In terms of syntax, in some languages
middles are syntactically indistinguishable from passives, while in others they
pattern with unergative structures; in the former type of language, the implicit
Agent is syntactically active, while in the latter it is not. On the basis of the lack of
cross-linguistic uniformity, a semantic approach to middles will be pursued,
according to which middles qualify as a special kind of generic sentence, namely
dispositional generics. We will extend the discussion to (apparent) challenges to the
semantic approach, namely impersonal middles as in (2) from German, and adjunct
middles, as in (3) from Dutch.
(2) Hier tanzt es sich gut.
here dances it REFL well
‘One dances well here.’
(3) Deze schoenen lopen prettig.
these shoes walk nicely
‘One walks nicely in these shoes.’

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