초록
영어
The English middle construction is an ideal device to express a certain property of a patient in a relatively simple form. This property of the middle’s patient is understood as a state since it does not refer to an actually happening event. The present paper is an attempt to analyze this superficial stativeness of the English middle which appears as a property of a patient. Considering aspectual property of the middle participating verbs, affectedness of the sentential subject, and semantically involved agent, I claim that the English middle is a structure which includes the underlying level of transitivity. Precisely, the English middle retains a transitive event structure which is formed through a process of filtration. To account for the middle’s latent event structure, I propose three types of aspectual and discourse features co-functioning within the event frame-‘complete telicity ([+TEL])’, ‘non-terminativity ([-TER])’, and ‘reboundability ([+REB])'. The feature, [+TEL], qualifies the verbs of accomplishment, of achievement, and of motion as the middle verbs while the feature, [-TER], filters out the verbs that announce terminative completion of an event. Another feature, [+REB], stipulates the relationship between a middle participating verb and its immediate argument. Together with all three features above, the event structure of the English middle is brought to completion and ready to be transferred to a property of a patient.
목차
1. Introduction
2. Underlying transitivity of the middle
2.1. Transitivity of the middle verbs
2.2. Agentivity in the middle
2.3. Affectedness of the internal argument
3. Aspectual property of the middle
3.1. Conventional views on aspectual property of the middle
3.2. Telicity and incrementality
4. Underlying event structure of the middle
4.1. Complete telicity
4.2. Non-terminativity
4.3. Reboundability
5. Concluding remarks
References