Middles

Applied arguments in Spanish inchoative middle constructions

“…In fact, middle formation is distant from being a uniform process across languages, or even within the same language; hence some scholars consider the middle as a semantic category, rather than a syntactic one, that can be conveyed via a variety of syntactic constructions in each language (Condoravdi 1989;Lekakou 2005). Ackema & Schoorlemmer (2006) point out that there are languages whose middles contain a reflexive marker, and those which do not; middle constructions can be agentive or non-agentive, personal or impersonal, or be licensed as arguments or adjuncts. This crosslinguistic heterogeneity sparked syntacticians' interest in this phenomenon throughout the years, which translated into numerous analyses of different nature, including syntactic (Keyser & Roeper 1984;Hale & Keyser 1986;Roberts 1987;Stroik 1992;Schäfer 2008), semantic (O'Gready 1980;Dixon 1982;Chierchia 2003) and lexicalist analyses (Fagan 1992;Ackema & Schoorlemmer 1994;, to name a few.…”

“…(5a)). Some scholars (Oosten 1977;Condoravdi 1989;Hulk & Cornips 2000;Ackema & Schoorlemmer 2006) point out the fact that the theme appears to entail some degree of agency, in the sense that it is some of the notional object's properties that determine the progress of the event represented in the middle. Thus, Condoravdi (1989) argues that the type of adverbs that can appear in these structures must specify the mapping of those events onto time, or else determine the theme's degree of affectedness by the event over time.…”

“…Despite this crucial difference, there are certain properties that remain constant across languages. First of all, it is generally agreed (Levin 1982;Keyser & Roeper 1984;Fellbaum 1985;Condoravdi 1989;Fagan 1992;Ackema & Schoorlemmer 2006) that genericity is at the core of these structures; they portray as genetic an otherwise episodic predicate; the use of imperfective tenses as well as the fact that in many cases the notional object or grammatical subject stands for a type (cf. (5b) above), or as a specific token pertaining to that type, contribute to this type of reading.…”

“…Ackema & Schoorlemmer (2006) (henceforth, A&S) propose a crosslinguistic classification of middle constructions based on whether such structures in the different languages lack Suárez-Palma: Applied arguments in Spanish inchoative middle constructions Art. 9, page 5 of 37…”

The square of disposition

“…15 Lekakou (2005) argues that middles do not ascribe a dispositional property to the external argument of the verb, but rather to the internal one. Furthermore, there are variants of middles where the property is ascribed to an adjunct, or even an expletive pronoun, as exemplified by the following Dutch examples (Ackema & Schoorlemmer 1994;2006 Hence, middles express passive rather than active universal dispositions.…”