The middle construction and some machine translation issues: exploring the process of compositional cospecification in quality-oriented middles

Abstract

This paper aims at exploring the colloconstructional analysis of multiword units (MWU) in machine translation regarding the middle construction in terms of compositional cospecification (Yoshimura, 1998; Yoshimura & Taylor, 2004). For that purpose, I examine the Adverb + Verb collocation focusing on the predicates cut and drive, collocated with quality-oriented adjuncts (Heyvaert, 2003) and incorporating Inanimate Subject entities (Patients, Enablers and Instruments). The number of instances examined is 500+. The data analysed reveals that apart from the generalised Qt-Qc pattern in shift of semantic importance, other patterns (namely, Qc-Qc) can be found by virtue of the prototype effects of the construction (cf. Taylor, 1995), thus, providing a potential source of disambiguation in the computational treatment of MWU in machine translation.