The present article tries to propose a simple criterion to select “qilai” middle construction based on corpus with a contrastive study of English and Mandarin Chinese.The criterion is “semantic orientation of nuclear adjunction”, which serves as a preface to the corpus of Chinese middle construction and a contrastive study of English and Chinese middle construction.The paper also proposes three functions of modification, which along with the criterion can make a distinction of middle prototype and quasi-middle, and then identify some controversial middles, such as “TING/KAN/XIANG/SHUO Qilai”.