A Comparative Study in English and Chinese Middle Construction: an OT Approach

A Comparative Study in English and Chinese Middle Construction: an OT Approach

Middle construction is a very peculiar aspect of language in which the active sentence form is used to express the passive meaning. Because of this peculiarity, many researches have worked on it. One of the most representative ways to analyze this topic has been done through the lexical approach (Hale & Keyse (1987); Fagan (1988, 1992); Ackema & Schoorlemmer (1994, 1995); Massam (1992); Roberts (1987); Zribi-Herts (1993)). The lexical approach considers the middle construction being formed in the lexicon level. That is, the reason for the disparity between the sentence form and the meaning it represents can be found in the lexicon. But the problem is none of the many attempts based on the lexicon approaches can successfully explain all or most of the middle construction cases satisfactorily. Thus, I have employed a new theory called OT to solve this confusing problem. It tries to explain as much data as possible, and finally raises the same constraint hierarchy for English and Chinese: SUB>>FILL>>CASE-CHE>>A-CHE>>STAY To sum up, through the OT constraints for both English and Chinese, it shows that two languages share some universal features in middle construction, which can be seen as common principles; the distinctions between them can be considered as parameters, which need more researches to figure them out.