Abstract:
The patient-subject construction consists of a patient NP in the subject position, a transitive verb which expresses an action causing an overt effect on a patient, and a verb modifier which expresses a physical state of the subject NP. Some important questions arise in the research works of this construction. The first one is whether the patient-subject construction is a type of the passive construction or not. This question arises from the fact that the patient NP appears in the subject position in both constructions and that both constructions express similar a semantic property in that the subject NP is non-agentive. Another question is whether the patient-subject construction is a type of the middle construction or not. Some researchers believe that the patient-subject construction is a type of middle construction because both constructions consist of a transitive verb and a participant assuming the patient role appearing in the sentence-initial position. The last question is that the NP appearing in the sentence-initial position functions as the topic or the subject of the sentence. This thesis, which is carried out with the assumptions of Construction Grammar, aims to argue that patient-subject construction is syntactically and semantically different from passive and middle constructions and to argue that NP in the sentence-initial position functions as the subject rather than the topic. In addition, this thesis aims to classify the patient-subject construction into subtypes. It is found that all instances of the patient-subject construction express a common state of affairs, namely, the current physical state of the entity denoted by the subject NP. This construction can be syntactically and semantically classified into seven types. The seven types of the patient-subject construction express the following states of affairs: (1) a current physical state of the subject NP after having completely undergone an action, (2) a current physical state of the subject NP after having undergone an action for a certain period of time or for a number of times, (3) a current physical state of the subject NP after having undergone an action at a point of time, (4) a current physical resulting state of the subject NP which results from an action carried out onto the subject NP, (5) a current location of the subject NP after having been moved from a previous position, (6) a current precise physical position of the subject NP after having been moved, and 7) a current physical state which volitionally results from an action carried out onto the subject NP. It can be concluded that the patient-subject construction is a construction distinct from the passive and the middle constructions. It has its own syntactic and semantic characteristics. It expresses a current physical state of location of the subject NP after having undergone an action