A construction-based account of the synchrony and diachrony of the Chinese middle construction

Abstract

Abstract Chinese middle construction (Chinese MC) uses the form ‘N+V+qilai+C’ to express passive meaning. This study has shown that Chinese MC’s internal connections can be reflected by its synchronic hierarchy. Chinese MC expands horizontally through argument structure and vertically through semantics and its expansion mechanism can be explained by the varying abstraction model of categorization which combines the prototype and the exemplar model. This study has also validated the truth that Chinese MC is a concept encompassing unclear boundaries within its members by using the schematic network model which is the combination of the radial set model and the overlapping set model to represent the internal connections of Chinese MC. By connecting Chinese MC with patient-subject sentences, this study has shown that the expansion of Chinese MC is affected by other structures. Finally, this study has unveiled the affinity between constructionalization and grammaticalization by examining how Chinese MC relates to V-qilai’s grammaticalization.