The Recognition and Syntactic Behaviour of Middles

The primary aim of the present paper is to investigate the syntactic distribution of middle verbs in English. Middle formation seems to involve demotion of the external argument and promotion of the internal argument to the grammatical subject position, as is the case in passivisation. This paper is organized as follows. In section 1, we offer a definition of the term “middle verb” and present some of its distinguishing features. In section 2, we look into the question of whether or not middles involve 0-roles. In section 3, we shed some light on the nature of the empty category and the syntactic position external arguments fill in middles. Then in section 4, we examine whether middles are the endproduct of a movement operation. Finally, in section 5, we bring the paper to a close by concluding remarks to the effect that the empty external 0-roles in middles syntactically emerge as PROs.