The Oxford Handbook of Cognitive Linguistics Part 90. In the past decade, Cognitive Linguistics has developed into one of the most dynamic and attractive frameworks within theoretical and descriptive linguistics The Oxford Handbook of Cognitive Linguistics is a major new reference that presents a comprehensive overview of the main theoretical concepts and descriptive/theoretical models of Cognitive Linguistics, and covers its various subfields, theoretical as well as applied. | 860 RICARDO MALDONADO Two participant event Reflexive Middle One participant event Degree of Distinguishability Figure . Kemmer s distinguishability hypothesis subject exerting a high degree of mental control and the shorter middle form marks spontaneous situations involving the subject acting as an undergoer or experiencer. This contrast is common in Dutch pronoun zichzelf vs. the light pronoun zich Hungarian pronoun magat vs. the verbal suffix -kod- or -koz Turkish pronoun kendi vs. affix -in- Latin clitic se vs. suffix -r Greek reflexive pronoun afto vs. inflected middle and many other languages. An eloquent example from Dutch illustrates the lower degree of subject control in the middle construction 57b 57 a. Jan zag zichzelf naast zijn ouders staan op de foto. Jan saw hrm next his parents stand on the picture Jan saw himself . he conjured up a picture of himself standing next to his parents in the picture. b. In gedachten zag Jan zich in de gevangenis belanden in thoughts saw Jan lrm in the prison land Jan saw himself . had a mental picture of himself ending up in prison. based on van der Leek 1991 455 Given the previous contrasts the idea that the middle develops from the reflexive has commonly been accepted Faltz 1985 Fagan 1988 Givon 1990 Kemmer 1993b 1994 . On that view the middle occupies a position one stage down the cline from the position occupied by reflexives in other words just like reflexives reduce transitive subject object differentiation by having subject and object co-refer middles further reduce the split representation to the point where the two coreferring participants are no longer distinguishable. Now the commonly accepted assumption that middles necessarily develop from reflexives has been misguided by the idea that all languages have the transitive action-chain model as their base line. According to cognitive analyses however languages may start construing an event from the dominion of the subject such that interaction with .
