ZUM VERGLEICH DER DEUTSCHEN UND JAPANISCHEN MITTELKONSTRUKTION.

This article provides a contrastive analysis of middle constructions in Japanese and German. After having established that the middle construction in Japanese is not an independent construction, just like in German, it is claimed that in Japanese middle constructions the external argument stays in overt syntax as a dative subject, contrary to the claim by Lekakou (2005). However, in Japanese middle constructions the internal argument is assigned Nominative case, in the same way as in German, which results from the connection between Nominative case and Tense. Furthermore, it is pointed out that in Japanese middle constructions an adverb such as leicht 'easily' is not necessary, just like in middle constructions with lassen 'let' in German. This fact supports the claim by Lekakou (2005) that such an adverb is necessary in canonical middle constructions in German in order to recover the semantically implicit agent, since both in middle constructions in Japanese and in middle constructions with lassen 'let' the agent is syntactically present and is thus not needed to be recovered. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]