Abstract
The middle voice has received ample attention in the literature, yet the precise boundary between middle voice and other related constructions still remains elusive. For example, do sentences like Mary slept (*herself) well last night and Mary washed (herself) thoroughly and expertly belong to the middle voice or the reflexive domain, or are they simply intransitive one-participant structures? While ambiguity between reflexive and middles has been noted by (Kemmer, Suzanne. 1993. The middle voice. Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins.), I show that the problem is more widespread. Depending on the marking patterns available in a given language, such ambiguities can occur between middles and prototypical intransitive one-participant events, or between middles and reflexives. Using data from two languages with distinct marking patterns – English (a language with a reflexive marker but no middle marker) and Romanian (a language with one marker of each type) – I discuss the possibility of distinguishing middles from other related constructions. In English, it is shown that the him/herself test can be used to distinguish direct middles from intransitive one-participant events. In Romanian, we see middle and reflexive markers used together in the same construction without contradiction, bringing together both middle and reflexive semantics (as well as marking). In agreement with (Maldonado, Ricardo. 2000. Spanish reflexives. In Zygmunt Frajzyngier & Traci Walker (eds.), Reflexives: Forms and functions, 153–185. Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins.) and (Manney, Linda. 2001. Middle voice in Modern Greek: Meaning and function of a morphoyntactic category. Amsterdam &Philadelphia: John Benjamins.), the account given here supports the view of the middle voice as a unified phenomenon, and following (Maldonado, Ricardo. 2009. Middle as a basic voice system. In Lilian Guerrero, Ibáñez Sergio & Belloro Valeria (eds.), Studies in role and reference grammar. México: Instituto de Investigaciones Filológicas, UNAM.), the main function of the middle is to profile the core properties of events (but not necessarily to reduce the relative elaboration of participants, as proposed by Kemmer, Suzanne. 1993. The middle voice. Amsterdam &Philadelphia: John Benjamins.). So, unlike active and passive voice which concern the focusing of various participants (namely, Agents and Patients, respectively), the middle voice focuses the event itself.
Acknowledgements
I am grateful to Gerry Delahunty for discussion of the data and for various readings of the manuscript, to Alison Southby for editorial suggestions, and to the anonymous referees and journal editor whose helpful comments have helped me enormously in developing my arguments and ideas. I also acknowledge Frank Lichtenberk who first introduced me to the middle voice and even though he is no longer here to help guide me in person, his memory will always be with me in this and all other work I do. As always, the usual disclaimers apply.
Appendix A. Glossary of abbreviations
- 1/2/3p
first/second/third person
- emphatic pron.
emphatic pronoun
- fem.
feminine
- masc.
masculine
- mm
middle marker
- past
past tense
- pl.
plural
- sg.
singular
Appendix B. Additional examples from Romanian
Romanian middles
| 1. | Ion s-a desenat uitîndu-se în oglindă. | John drew himself [by] looking in the mirror. |
| 2. | Ion s-a dezamăgit aşa de repede. | John became discouraged quickly. |
| 3. | Ion s-a speriat de uriaş. | John got scared by the giant. |
| 4. | Maria se vede in oglindă. | Maria sees herself in the mirror. |
| 5. | Maria s-a citat adeasea. | Maria has cited herself often. |
| 6. | Maria se luptă din greu. | Maria is fighting hard. |
| 7. | Maria se luptă cu Marius. | Maria is fighting with Marius. |
Romanian reflexive emphatic middles
| 8. | Ion s-a desenat pe el însuşi azi dimneaţă. | John has drawn himself this morning. |
| 9. | Ion s-a dezamăgit pe sine însuşi. | John has disappointed himself. |
| 10. | Ion s-a speriat de sine însuşi trântind uşa. | John scared himself slamming the door. |
| 11. | Maria se vede pe sine însăşi în oglindă. | Maria sees herself in the mirror. |
| 12. | Maria s-a citat pe sine însăşi adeasea. | Maria has cited herself often. |
| 13. | Maria se luptă cu sine însăşi. | Maria is fighting hard with herself. |
References
Alexiadou, Artemis & Edir Doron. 2012. The syntactic construction of two non-active voices: Passive and middle. Journal of Linguistics 48(1). 1–34.10.1017/S0022226711000338Search in Google Scholar
Alexiadou, Artermis, Elena Anagnostopoulou & Schäfer. Florian 2015. External arguments in transitivity alternations. Oxford: Oxford University Press.10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199571949.001.0001Search in Google Scholar
Avram, Mioara. 1986. Grammatica pentru toți [Grammar for everyone]. București: Editura Academiei Republicii Socialiste România.Search in Google Scholar
Bărbuță, Ion, Armenia Cicală, Elena Constantinovici, Teodor Cotelnic & Alexandru Dîrul (eds.). 2000. Grammatica uzuală a limbii romane [The regular grammar of Romanian]. Chișinău: Grupul Editorial Litera.Search in Google Scholar
Bassac, Christian & Pierrette Bouillon. 2002. Middle transitive alternations in English: A generative lexicon approach. In Paul Boucher & Marc Plénat (eds.), Many morphologies, 29–47. Sommerville, MA: Cascadilla Press.Search in Google Scholar
Beck, David. 2000. Unitariness of participant and event in the Bella Coola (Nuxalk) Middle Voice. International Journal of American Linguistics 66. 218–256.10.1086/466418Search in Google Scholar
Börjars, Kirsti & Kate Burridge. 2010. Introducing English grammar. London &New York: Routledge.Search in Google Scholar
Calude, Andreea. 2004. Reflexive–middle and reciprocal–middle continua in Romanian. Proceedings of the 2004 Conference of the Australian Linguistic Society. http://ses.library.usyd.edu.au/handle/2123/93 (accessed 3 April 2017)Search in Google Scholar
Calude, Andreea. 2007. Light and heavy reflexive marking: The middle domain in Romanian. Annual Review of Cognitive Linguistics 5. 239–269.10.1075/arcl.5.10calSearch in Google Scholar
Collins, Peter & Carmella Hollo. 2010. English grammar: An introduction, 2nd edn. Hampshire: Palgrave MacMillan.10.1007/978-0-230-36576-6Search in Google Scholar
Cornilescu, Alexandra. 1998. Remarks on the syntax and the interpretation of Romanian middle passive se constructions. Revue Rou maine de Linguistique 43. 317–342.Search in Google Scholar
Daniliuc, Laura & Radu Daniliuc. 2000. Descriptive Romanian grammar. LINCOM Studies in Romance Linguistics 14. Munich: LINCOM Europa.Search in Google Scholar
Dindelegan, Pană Gabriela (ed.). 2013. The grammar of Romanian. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Search in Google Scholar
Doron, Edit. 2003. Agency and voice: The semantics of the Semitic templates. Natural language semantics 11(1). 1–67.10.1023/A:1023021423453Search in Google Scholar
Downing, Angela. 2015. English grammar: A university course. London & New York: Routledge.Search in Google Scholar
Enger, Hans-Olv & Tore Nesset. 1999. The value of cognitive grammar in typoloical Studies: The case of Norwegian and Russian passive, middle and reflexive. Nordic Journal of Linguistics 22. 27–60.10.1080/03325869950137045Search in Google Scholar
Faltz, Leonard. 1985 [1977]. Reflexivization: A study in universal syntax. New York: Garland.10.4324/9781315448688Search in Google Scholar
Geniušienė, Emma. 1987. The typology of reflexives. Berlin &Amsterdam: Mouton de Gruyter.10.1515/9783110859119Search in Google Scholar
Grimshaw, Joan. 1982. On the lexical representation of Romance reflexive clitics. In Joan Bresnan (ed.), The mental representation of grammatical relations, 87–148. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Search in Google Scholar
Haiman, John. 1983. Iconic and economic motivation. Language 59. 781–819.10.2307/413373Search in Google Scholar
Haspelmath, Martin. 2008. A frequentist explanation of some universals of reflexive marking. Linguistics Discovery 6(1). 40–63.10.1349/PS1.1537-0852.A.331Search in Google Scholar
Haspelmath, Martin, Andreea Calude, Michael Spagnol, Heiko Narrog & Elif Bamyacı. 2014. Coding causal-noncausal verb alternations: A form-frequency correspondence explanation. Journal of Linguistics 3. 1–27.10.1017/S0022226714000255Search in Google Scholar
Heine, Bernd. 2000. Polysemy involving reflexive and reciprocal markers in African languages. In Zygmunt Franjzyngier & Traci Curl (eds.), Reciprocals: Forms and functions, 1–30. Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins.10.1075/tsl.41.02heiSearch in Google Scholar
Hopper, Paul & Sandra Thompson. 1980. Transitivity in grammar and discourse. Language 56. 251–299.10.1353/lan.1980.0017Search in Google Scholar
Kemmer, Suzanne. 1993. The middle voice. Amsterdam &Philadelphia: John Benjamins.10.1075/tsl.23Search in Google Scholar
Kemmer, Suzanne. 1994. Middle voice, transitivity and events. In Barbara Fox Baraba & Paul Hopper (eds.), Voice: Form and function, 179–230. Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins.10.1075/tsl.27.09kemSearch in Google Scholar
Langacker, Ronald. 1991. Foundations of cognitive grammar, Vol. 2: Descriptive application. Stanford: Stanford University Press.Search in Google Scholar
Lichtenberk, Frantisek. 1985. Multiple uses of reciprocal constructions. Australian Linguistics Journal 5. 19–41.10.1080/07268608508599334Search in Google Scholar
Lichtenberk, Frantisek. 1994. Reflexives and reciprocals. In R. E. Asher & J. M. Y Simpson (eds.), The encyclopedia of language and linguistics, Vol. VII, 3504–3509. Oxford: Pergamon Press.Search in Google Scholar
Maldonado, Ricardo. 1992. Middle voice: The case of Spanish se. San Diego, CA: University of California dissertation.Search in Google Scholar
Maldonado, Ricardo. 2000. Spanish reflexives. In Zygmunt Frajzyngier & Traci Walker (eds.), Reflexives: Forms and functions, 153–185. Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins.10.1075/tsl.40.07malSearch in Google Scholar
Maldonado, Ricardo. 2008. Spanish middle syntax: A usage based proposal for grammar teaching. In Sabine De Knop & Teun De Rycker (eds.), Cognitive approaches to pedagogical grammar, 155–196. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.Search in Google Scholar
Maldonado, Ricardo. 2009. Middle as a basic voice system. In Lilian Guerrero, Ibáñez Sergio & Belloro Valeria (eds.), Studies in role and reference grammar. México: Instituto de Investigaciones Filológicas, UNAM. http://ricardomaldonado.weebly.com/uploads/2/7/6/3/2763410/maldonado-rrg2007_final_review.pdf [retrieved online 26 October 2016].Search in Google Scholar
Manney, Linda. 2001. Middle voice in Modern Greek: Meaning and function of a morphoyntactic category. Amsterdam &Philadelphia: John Benjamins.10.1075/slcs.48Search in Google Scholar
Miller, Jim. 2008. An introduction to English syntax, 2nd edn. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.10.1515/9780748633623Search in Google Scholar
Nelson, Gerald & Sidney Greenbaum. 2016. An introduction to English grammar. London & New York: Routledge.Search in Google Scholar
Peitsara, Kirsti. 1997. The development of the reflexive strategies in English. In Matti Rissanen, Kytö Merja & Kirsti Heikkonen (eds.), Grammaticalization at work: Studies of long-term developments in English, 277–370. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.Search in Google Scholar
Radden, Günter & René Dirven. 2007. Cognitive English grammar. Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins.10.1075/clip.2Search in Google Scholar
Rosen, Carol. 1989. The relational structure of reflexive clauses: Evidence from Italian. New York: Garland.Search in Google Scholar
Siemund, Peter. 2010. Grammaticalization, lexicalization and intensification: English itself as a marker of middle situation types. Linguistics 48(4). 797–836.10.1515/ling.2010.025Search in Google Scholar
Siemund, Peter. 2014. The emergence of English reflexive verbs: An analysis based on the Oxford English Dictionary. English Language and Linguistics 18(1). 49–73.10.1017/S1360674313000270Search in Google Scholar
Smith, Mark. 2004. Light and heavy reflexives. Linguistics 42(3). 573–615.10.1515/ling.2004.019Search in Google Scholar
Vasilescu, Andra. 2013. The semantics of personal and reflexive pronouns. In Carmen Dobrovie-Sorin & Ion Giurgea (eds.), A reference grammar of Romanian, Vol. I: The noun phrase, 268–282. Amsterdam & Philadephia: John Benjamins.Search in Google Scholar
Vihman, Virve-Anneli. 2002. Middle voice in Estonian. Transactions of the Philological Society 100. 131–160.10.1111/1467-968X.00092Search in Google Scholar
Wehrli, Eric. 1986. On some properties of French clitic se. The syntax of pronominal clitics. Syntax and Semantics 19. 263–283.10.1163/9789004373150_012Search in Google Scholar
© 2017 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston
