Pretense constructions in English and Urdu: The case of the inchoative and middle constructions

This article compares the inchoative and middle constructions in two typologically separate languages, English and Urdu. These constructions, which are closely related, have been discussed in formal and functional accounts of language, mainly with respect to English. They have not received much attention in Cognitive Linguistics, much less in cross-linguistic terms. In this regard, the present article shows that the cognitive and cross-linguistic perspectives can combine fruitfully to cast additional light on the usage constraints of these constructions, which determines their meaning potential. The choice of Urdu and English is significant. English is an accusative language, whereas Urdu is a splitergative language that combines features of ergative and accusative languages. This difference definitely affects the way in which the inchoative and middle constructions are handled by language users. In addition, understanding the motivation behind this aspect of language use is central to our understanding of the nature of these constructions and how they relate. The inchoative and middle constructions are a type of pretense constructions, i.e., those involving the re-construal of states, situations, and events (Ruiz de Mendoza & Miro, 2019), which are often motivated by such phenomena as metaphor and metonymy. The crosslinguistic study of the examples in both languages has allowed us to search for the principles that underlie the expressions. The analysis, besides contributing to the understanding of conceptual differences between English and Urdu, has identified and accounted for relevant constraining factors that stem from typological differences (e.g., use of light verbs in Urdu) and grammatical constraints (e.g., promotion of an element depends on the prominence of its enabling condition in Urdu). The point of convergence has always been the pretense nature of the constructions.