Middle sentences: an argument for conceptual structure
Authors
- Luis Manuel Estudillo Díaz
Abstract
Middle sentences in English are only partly
described within the Government and Binding
theory. Some semantic and discourse generalizations which are integral to the meaning of these constructions are just set aside, if they are mentioned at all. The theory of conceptual semantics developed by Ray Jackendoff (1983, 1987, 1990) presents the first viable alternative to the syntactic strategies descending from Chomsky’s theory. In this paper I will examine the middle voice and
show how several Government and Binding analyses of these constructions fail to account
for important parts of the data. I hope to persuade the reader that a conceptual structure
analysis of this phenomenon provides a more appealing solution which fully integrates the syntactic and semantic generalizations.
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References
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