A Corpus-based Approach to the English Middle Construction
Fuminori Nakamura (Keio University)
The aim of this paper is to explain
acceptability in the English middle
construction in a unified way byexamining cases in verbs of creation suchas write, which have been considered not
to be middle verbs, as in the following
sentences;(1)

Odes to herself write easily when she’s
narcissistic mood. (Rosta 1995:127, myemphasis)(2) A dense-crumb carrot cake bakes easily
in a springform pan.
(http://www.ehow.com/about_5282790_t
hings-can-baked-springform-pan.html)

This paper claims that not only the verbal
semantics but also the correlation ofverbs with subject nominals play a crucialrolein
determining
acceptability.
Specifically, more frequently a given
nominal occurs with a specific verbs incorpora,more
acceptablemiddlesentences with these two words become.
This explanation enables researchers topredict acceptability in more detailed
fashion so that they will capture different
acceptability in the middle construction
with different elements.
First of all, it should be pointed outthat previous literature has predictedthat verbs of creation do not occur in theEnglish middle construction. Taniguchi(2005) claims that Only verbs whichrepresents Prototype-transitivity can bemiddle verbs with claiming that verbs ofcreation does not express the P-transitiverelation; it, therefore, predicts that verbsof creation would not be middle verbs.
Honda (2005) makes an attempt toexplain acceptability of the middle
construction from a viewpoint ofecological psychology. It claims that themiddle
construction
represents
affordance of a subject referent.
Affordance is information about an entity
obtained by actually acting on it;
therefore, the entity should be assumed
to exist before the action. Verbs ofcreation contradicts this claim because aneffective object does not exist before acts
designated by the verbs but is created asa result of the events. Therefore, thisstrongly excludes the verbs from thegroup of middle verbs.
As an alternative to theseapproaches, this paper hypothesizes thatacceptability in the middle construction isdetermined, at least partially, by themutual predictability between amain-verb event and a subject referent.
Let us consider typical examples of the
middle construction as a start point.
(3)

The book reads easily.

(4)

The knife cuts well.

The approach here explains acceptability
in these examples in the following way.
The word book frequently occurs with theverb read and vice versa because it is anobject for reading. The word knife
strongly predicts the verb cut and viceversa because it is a tool for cutting. Thiscan be exemplified by the corpus-based
study in British National Corpus (BNC)
as in the following;

1VerbFrequency

MI score

write

1634

3.102read

1562

3.53

3

publish900

3.94

4entitle

132

3.35

5compile

53

3.00

Table 1 collocation of book in BNC
VerbFrequency

MI score

1cut

214

4.38

2stabbed

58

4.35

3twist41

6.75

4slash38

3.44

5slice32

3.13

Table 2 collocation of knife in BNC
These tables clearly suggest that thefrequency and the mutual predictability,represented by MI-score play animportant role in acceptability in themiddle construction.
This approach does not exclude
verbs of creation because it does notassume that a subject referent should
exist before action designated by a verb
but predict, and be predicted by, the verb.
As for (1), let us consider Table 1 again.
Write is strongly predicted by thenominal book as well as read. Thefrequency facilitates use of the verb in themiddle construction. As for (2). The same
argument can be made with the followingtable;
Verb

FrequencyMI score

1eat

192

4.89

2

cut116

3.38

3bake

108

7.99

4

cover99

3.13

5

wrap

45

3.71

Table 3 collocation of cake in BNC
This table shows that verb bake is one of
the most frequent verbs with noun cake.
Therefore, by examining the mutual
connection between a nominal and a verb,
acceptability of the middle sentence withthem can be predicted to a large extent.
Lastly, the current paper discusses
implications of these results forsemantics.
Thestatisticalmutualpredictability of a noun and a verb in
corpora should stand on a semantic basis.
First, it should be considered that a nouncontains verbal information (e.g. a book isfor reading) and a verb contains nominal
information (e.g. cutting something isoften done with a cutting tool such as aknife); otherwise, this predictability could
not occur. This argument would becompatible with qualia structures andenrichment of nominal semantics should
be required. Second, acceptability inlanguage comes not from a rule-basedlearning system but from a usage-based
statistical system, which accepts degreesof acceptability.
Reference
Honda,Akira.
2005.
Afodansu-noninchi-imiron[Anaffordance-theoretic approach tocognitivesemantics].
Tokyo:
University of Tokyo Press
Rosta, Andrew. 1995. ‘How does thissentence interpret?’ The semantics
of English mediopassives. In Aarts,
Bas and Charles F. Meyer (eds.),
The verb in contemporary English:
theory and description. Cambridge:
Cambridge
UniversityPress.123-144.
Taniguchi, Kazumi. 2005. Jitai-gainen-no
kigouka-ni-kansuru
ninchi-gengogakuteki-kenkyu [Ancognitive approach to symbolizationof event conceptions]. Tokyo:
Hitsuzi-Shobo