STRUCTURAL PECULIARITIES OF MIDDLE AND ERGATIVE CONSTRUCTIONS IN ENGLISH

Polkhovska
unpublished
The article analyzes syntactic peculiarities of English middle and ergative constructions from the point of view of generative grammar. It claims that middle and ergative verbs generate from the same verb class. The main syntactic differences of these constructions are ergative verb marking of implicit subject with causer teta-role, and middle verb generation of position for two subjects. Modern trends in linguistics point out to the increasing interest towards the investigation of integrative
more » ... rocesses of morphology, syntax, semantics, and pragmatics. The category of voice is one of the most conceptually complex categories in the verb system. Regardless numerous researches, it still remains the subject of constant linguistic debates, which is explained by the peculiarities of voice semantics, means of voicemea-ningexpression, as well as by different interpretations of the term "voice". When analyzing category of voice linguistsadvert to its dual nature: formally, the category of voice is a morphological category (as it is expressed with the help of a specific grammatical marker, i.e. it involves the change of the verb form), while semantically, voice is a syntactic-semantic category, it indicates certain relations among parts of the sentence and their re-ferents. The majority of linguists who investigate the English language do not doubt active and passive voice existence. However, the existence of reflexive, reciprocal, middle voices, and the category of ergativity is a controversial matter. Our research goal is to investigate common and differential features of English erga-tive and middle constructions applying the methodology of generative grammar. The object of the investigation is English ergative and middle constructions. The subject of the paper is the generative peculiarities of these constructions, the analysis of their common and differential syntactic peculiarities. The generative grammar emergence marked a new era in linguistic investigations. The linguistic theory started to be understood as the investigation of the process of interrelation of thought and language. The object of generative grammar research is syntax, conventionally defined as a creative part of grammar. Syntactic structure of a sentence is a system of rules and principles, that enable the speaker, on the one hand, to form correct sentences and, on the other, to evaluate them from the point of correctness or incor-rectness of grammatical structure. With the help of these rules the speaker with his limited possibilities is able to generate infinite amount of sentences. Moreover, the semantic component of grammar is not neglected either, it is considered to be the integral part of grammar [2, 175]. The main peculiarity of passive construction is the absence of external argument of the verb and the failure to mark the internal argument with an accusative case (Scheme 1.) That's why the internal argument-NP (noun phrase) question moves to the position specifier TP to check the feature of EPP (Extended Projection Principle), which is formulated as the obligatory subject presence in the structure of the sentence. The emergence of auxiliary verb to be in the passive construction is explained by the presence of functional projection Pass P (Passive Phrase) in its structure [3; 5]. (1) 29 Scheme 1. The generation of passive construction question was asked
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