The Verb Copy Construction and the Post-verbal Constraint in Chinese: Combining a Formal Approach with a Diachronic Perspective on Chinese Verb Phrases

This study investigates the verb copy construction (VCC) in Chinese from diachronic and synchronic perspectives. The VCC has been posited as a post-verbal constraint (PVC). Given that the VCC and PVC did not exist in Old and Middle Chinese, this study examines how and why they emerged diachronically, and proposes that they are in fact a reaction to a syntactic and pragmatic/semantic conflict. The VCC emerged as a perfect reconciliation of this conflict. The other focus of the study is the formal analysis of the VCC in Lexical-Functional Grammar (LFG). In previous studies, the VCC has been analyzed as a single-headed structure, with the first VP as an adjunct to the second. Based on historical evidence as well as facts regarding aspect attachment and adjunct distribution, I propose that the VCC is a coordinate VP, with each conjunct as a head. I further propose that the VP containing all subcategorized arguments of the verb stands in a formal subsumption relation to each other VP. This subsumption constraint directly explains why that VP must be the first VP if it occurs at all in the VCC.