| In the Chinese history of grammar, it has been a highlight subject for grammarians to study a verb and its syntactic construction. Zu Tang Ji, the quotation of Buddhism Zen, is a valuable language material reflected Late Tang /Five Dynasties times. So far no one has been the comprehensive study of verbs in Zu Tang Ji.The dissertation, on the basis of analyzing Zu Tang Ji's predicate verbs, attempts to investigate the following questions: What are the characteristics of the language of Zu Tang Ji itself? What are the characteristics of the language in Han-Wei dynasties? What are the changes of the language in Zu Tang Ji times? And what are the new characteristics of the grammar? Meanwhile, it also explores such problems as the syntactic construction of verbs, the object and complement types of verbs, the new verbs as well as the verbs having Buddhism Zen language feature.In terms of the principle of combining form with meaning, the dissertation combines synchronic depiction with diachronic analysis, quantitative with qualitative analysis, and depiction with explain. And it studies the rules of using predicate verbs and its evolution based on the connection between modern Chinese grammar theory and old mandarin grammar study.The paper consists of three chapters. Chapter One is a brief introduction. Based on the introduction of Zu Tang Ji, the paper makes a general discussion about the problems concerning the study of the predicate verbs. For example, the criteria used to identify predicate verbs, the status of current research into verbs, the explanations toward the purpose, value of the work.Chapter Two is the principal part. According to their meaning, grammatical function, and collocation, the predicate verbs in Zu Tang Ji can be divided into nine categories: speech verbs, modal verbs, permissive verbs, psychological verbs, statue verbs, relative verbs, existence verbs, action verbs, directional verbs. Based on deep analysis of research production, the paper comes up with some new views as follows: 1. From synchronic and diachronic point of view, the paper investigates the eight normal verbs "yan,yu, yue, yun, shuo, hua, wei, dao" and shows so complicated syntactic construction and grammatical function of "shuo"and"dao" in Tang dynasty. Meanwhile, it also reveals the fast change of Buddhism in the history of language. 2. It explores certain textual attribute of Zu Tang Ji according to the difference of speech verb frequency. 3.It studies some characteristic verbs of Zu Tang Ji and discusses the word "wen" which has no "inquire" meaning in Buddhism Zen books. It is equivalent to usual speech verbs such as "yue"or "shuo". Meanwhile it deals with the sentence"……ze(ji)bu wen……" which also has the characteristics of Zen literature language because of high frequency. 4. It investigates deep the zero-marked forms and the repeated marks of speech verbs. 5. The dissertation complements predecessor's view, thinks that modal verb "zhong" is used from ancient times, but it have not been developed enough because of low frequency. 6. It investigates the origin of modal verb "hui" and draws a conclusion: Modal "Huil" means "possibility" coming from the verb "hui" which signifies "accord", "coincidence". It is the mechanism of metaphor and inference forces it to be grammaticalize. "hui2" means "capability" stemming from the verb "hui" which signifies "understand", "apperception" because of the syntactic construction and grammatical function. 7. It describes the predicate-complement structure of "bude" and its evolution. 8. The grammaticalization of the permissive verb "xu" having been dated from Jin Dynasty. It has played an important role for the mechanism of metaphor and inference as well as syntax environment. 9. Comparing the imperative grammatical structure with the causative grammatical structure, the paper explores their interrelation and showed that the grammaticalization of imperative grammatical structure has two factors: one is the act weakening of imperative verb, another one is the changes of syntax environment. 10. It deals with the transform from permissive verbs to passive markers and discusses the definition of passive preposition and their competition. The conclusion is that the verb "zao" in old mandarin Chinese ever went through the process of grammaticalization, that is, "zao" used as a passive marker shows that the Chinese passive voice should be identical. 11. From the semantic point of view, it describes the Valence of psychological verbs and its accusative type. 12.It studies the characteristic of statue verbs and analyses the grammaticalization of the verb "le". 13. It deals with the phenomenon of modifying predicate verb "you", and explains the origin. And it indicates that it can be not ignored for the influence of the congener sentence in ancient Chinese and old mandarin Chinese except for language contact and medium inducement etc. 14. It investigates the development of the "give-type" verb "yu" and concluded that the similar modern syntactic constructions have existed in Zu Tang Ji. 15. It investigates different accusative positions of directive verbs. And it explains the phenomenon that doesn't exist in Zu Tang Ji. And it is not appeared the object in the middle position and in the front position until Song dynasty. Also it is not appeared the object in the back position until Qing dynasty.Chapter three is to study the relevant problems of verbs. It explains new verbs such as "bu(ju)" "yisi" "shangliang" "tongxin" "guandai" "luocai" being failed in "Chinese Dictionary" and other reference books. Besides, it also investigates basically the components and characteristics of coordinate compound verbs.
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