The types of the middle voice category in Ancient Chinese

This study explores the Middle Voice Category in ancient Chinese, investigating its syntactic semantic characteristics. Across languages, the middle voice encompasses reflexive, reciprocal, anti-causative, and potential passive constructions. In ancient Chinese, reflexive and reciprocal usages are marked by pronominal adverbs like '自' and '相,' often combined with verbs affecting one's body or mind. Anti-causative constructions involve reordering the sentence structure, indicating spontaneous events without the passive subject's will. However, verbs with strong act or spontaneity resist conversion to anti-causative forms. Potential passive constructions use adjectives such as '可', '足', '難', and '易,' omitting the actor to convey non-event and static characteristics. These constructions reflect the expanding meanings of the middle voice category in ancient Chinese, as discussed by Haspelmath (1987), while also suggesting a weakening of the subject's static nature and the verb