Adorning Materials in Middles

Joh, Yoon-kyoung

doi:10.30961/lr.2020.56.1.53

Lang. Res. 56(1):53-71

pISSN: 0254-4474, eISSN: 2586-7113

DOI: https://doi.org/10.30961/lr.2020.56.1.53

Article

Adorning Materials in Middles

Yoon-kyoung Joh ¹ ^, ^†

Author Information & Copyright ▼

¹Mokpo National University

^†Corresponding Author: Associate Professor English Language and Literature Department Mokpo National University 1666 Yeongsan-ro, Cheongye-myeon, Muan 58554, Korea , E-mail: ykjoh@mokpo.ac.kr

ⓒ Copyright 2020 Language Education Institute, Seoul National University. This is an Open-Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/) which permits unrestricted non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Received: Feb 10, 2020 ; Revised: Mar 14, 2020 ; Accepted: Mar 29, 2020

Published Online: Apr 30, 2020

ABSTRACT

This paper claims that adorning materials in middles can commonly be translated into adverbials since modality, negation, and focus can all be expressed using various types of adverbials. Through the analytical lens that views middle constructions as distributivity constructions that are essentially reduced to plurality, this common property among adorning materials in middles is highly interesting. Thus, this paper accounts for the adorning materials in middles in Joh’s (2016) analysis, which treats adverbials in middles as one of distributivity’s core arguments. This paper also discusses how adverbials that are implicitly inserted in middle sentences can be conditioned. To answer this question, this paper relies on the differentiating effect that Sohn (2003) examined, extending the previously proposed unexpectedness condition.

Keywords: middle; adverbial; focus; modal; negation

References

Abbas, A. (2013). Focusing adverbs in medical academic discourse. Adab al-Kufa 6(16), 37-56 .

Bittner, M. (1994). Cross-linguistic semantics. Linguistics and Philosophy 17, 53-108 .

Cho, M-C. (2002). A semantic approach to English middle construction. Master's thesis. Chosun University .

Choe, J-W. (1987). Anti-quantifiers and a theory of distributivity. Ph.D. dissertation. University of Massachusetts .

Chung, T. (2001). Implicit arguments in English middles. Korea Journal of English Language and Linguistics 1(2), 331-347 .

Dowty, D. (2001). The Semantic Asymmetry of Argument Alternations; (and why it matters.) unpublished manuscript. <http://ling-ohio-state.edu/~dowty> .

Fellbaum, C. (1986). On the middle construction in English. Bloomington: Indiana University Linguistics Club .

Greenbaum, S. (1969). Studies in English adverbial usage. Coral Gables: University of Miami Press .

Hoye, L. (1997). Adverbs and modality in English. London: Longman .

10.

Huddleston, R. & Pullum, G. (2002). The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press .

11.

Joh, Y-K. (2014). English each and Korean kakkak. The Journal of Modern British & American Language & Literature 32(2), 31-50 .

12.

Joh, Y-K. (2016). Middle constructions and distributivity. Language Research 52(3), 557-577 .

13.

Krifka, M., Pelletier, J., Carlson, G., ter Meulen, A., Link, L., & Chierchia, G. (1995). Genericity: An Introduction. In G. Carlson & F. Pelletier, (eds.), The generic book (pp. 1-124). Chicago: The University of Chicago Press .

14.

Landman, F. (2000). Events and plurality: The Jerusalem lectures. Dordrecht: Kluwer .

15.

Lee, M-O. (2001). Recursiveness condition in the English middle construction. Korean Journal of Linguistics 26, 735-754 .

16.

Roberts, I. (1987). The representation of implicit and dethematized subjects. Dordrecht: Foris .

17.

Sohn, Y-M. (2002). Interpretation of English middle constructions. The History of English 14, 1-19 .

18.

Sohn, Y-M. (2003). Middle constructions in English: The syntax-lexical semantics interface. Doctoral dissertation. Seoul National University .

19.

Suzuki, D. & Fujiwara, T. (2017). The multifunctionality of 'possible' modal adverbs: A comparative look. Language 93(4), 827-841 .

20.

Zimmermann, M. (2002). Two sausages each: On the syntax and semantics of distance-distributivity. Doctoral dissertation. University of Amsterdam .