The Russian middle constructions are formed by the reflexive postfix –ся, which is homophonous to the passive morpheme. From a perspective of typological classification of middle constructions, the Russian middles seem to belong to Type II, since they ...
The Russian middle constructions are formed by the reflexive postfix –ся, which is homophonous to the passive morpheme. From a perspective of typological classification of middle constructions, the Russian middles seem to belong to Type II, since they employ the reflexive morpheme –ся like Greek and French. In fact, however, the Russian middles have the similitude with the English or Dutch middle constructions of type I, so-called adverbial middles, in the syntactic structure where the aid of an adverbial phrase is required as a syntactic constituent ([S VMIDDLE+СЯ *(ADV) (*NPINSTR)]). This middle structure differs from an ergative structure where the aid of an adverbial expression is optional ([S VERGATIVE+СЯ (ADV) (*NPINSTR)]). The Russian dynamic reflexive passives detransitivized from actives also utilize the reflexive postfix –ся ([S VPASSIVE+СЯ (ADV) (NPINSTR)]), which triggers the ambiguity among these three. The Russian reflexive passives are derived from both perfective and imperfective. In general, the imperfective reflexive passives are usually used, while the perfective reflexive counterparts are marginally used for some verbs denoting ‘covering’,
‘filling’, ‘illuminating’, ‘replacing’, ‘creating’, and ‘breaking’.
To form the Russian middle construction, there are several conditions to be required: i) the parallelism between active and middle sentences, ii) the presence of implicit subject, iii) adverbial modification, iv) aspectually stative as situation aspect, v) generic property. In a par with the English middles, the Russian middle constructions denote both generic property of the subject and non- episodic property, which is semantically realized irrespective of time. Generic middles are formed by the present tense to express a general statement, which is generic and non-episodic. However, non- generic middle constructions in Russian have the same syntactic structure as that of generic middles. The only distinction between them lies in that non-generic middles do not have genericity and modality, whereas generic middles do. Unlike the English non-generic middles where the verbs are used in the progressive or in the past tense, the Russian counterpart can use different tenses and aspect.
There are a few other constraints for middles: i) Affectedness Constraint, ii) Causative Constraint, iii) Executive Agent Prohibition Constraint, and iv) Aspectual Constraint. Affected Constraints cannot explain the grammaticality of √эта соната играется легко, but *this sonata plays easily. Causative Constraint cannot provide the evidence to make the sentence √the target hits easily, but *this wall hits easily. Executive Agent Prohibition Constraint cannot clarify the possibility of √эти свитера очень
хорошо почистились, but *эти свитера почистились. Last, Aspectual Constraint cannot explain the aspectual arbitrariness. According to this constraint, verbs that belong to ‘activity’ and
‘’accomplishment’ can allow for the middle constructions, because they can form their progressives. However, the corresponding Russian verbs denoting ‘achievement’ and ‘state’ can license the formation of middles. So these constraints do not provide appropriate explanations to form middle constructions. As far as aspect is concerned, the Russian middles are semantically conditioned by lexical meanings of verbs.
This research comes to a conclusion that the Russian middle constructions have the similar structure to adverbial middle which the English middles belong to and they have fewer constraints for the middle formation than the English middles. In addition, the Russian middles usually utilize the present tense to express genericity and the property of the subject of middles. Perfective and imperfective aspect as well as tense can both be used to form a middle construction. The Russian non-generic middles express non-generic property and event-oriented property.