Research On The Related Issues Of Modern Chinese Verb-object Structure

On the basis of the study of the issue of verb-object structure in modern Chinese, this paper makes an exploration of the ways different types of verbs take objects from several perspectives.With a corpus-based statistic study, the author analyzes and explains the objects that can follow verbs. As a non-native Chinese speaker, the author deals with the problem from perspectives different from those of native Chinese researchers. She pays more attention to the practicability of the issue as well as to description and explanation, i.e., not only caring about the theoretical exploration, but also about the practical use. The paper consists of eight chapters (including the introduction and conclusion) and appendix.The first chapter is the introduction, which presents the purpose and significance of this study, makes a brief review of the relevant research literature as well as an analysis of the cognitive-linguistic based construction grammar's reflection on and criticism of generative grammar.The second chapter establishes a theoretical system for the research of Chinese verbs and objects. On the basis of a review of the theories on subjects, the author makes a theoretical framework for the syntactic and semantic analysis of Chinese verbs. The paper also attempts to make a classification of the verbs in the Dictionary of Chinese Verbs with Examples of Their Usage in the Language according to the semantic features of verbs.The third chapter studies the grammatical functions of verbs with objects, i.e., studying a verb's requirement for object, and the whole verb-object structure. According to the criterion of whether a verb can be followed with an object or not, verbs can be divided into transitive and intransitive verbs. The object after the formal verb is a predicate object, which can be either a single predicate or a predicate which can be used with a modifier. According to the number of objects a verb can be followed, verbs can be divided into single-object and double-object verbs.A single-object verb, which can be only followed with one single object verb, can be classified and analyzed according to the nature of object. This chapter also makes a classification of the semantic meanings and grammatical functions of single-object and double-object verbs.The fourth chapter makes an analysis of objects from several perspectives. including the type of object, formal classification of object, the number of objects for a certain verb, general verb-object and special verb-object structures, verb-object verb, and the semantic meaning of nouns. As an important part in modern Chinese sentences, verb-object structure plays an important role in the Chinese language system. In consideration of the commonness and individuality, verb-object structures can be divided into two types: general verb-object structure and special verb-object structure. When we can distinguish the general verb-object structure from the special verb-object structure from three aspects: the semantic features of the verbs and objects, the possibility of objects' being analogized, and the extensibility of objects.In the fifth chapter, we select the verbs which can take objects and analyze the cases of verbs'taking objects: what kind of verbs can be followed with most objects? How many types of objects can they be followed with at most? How are verbs' abilities of taking objects? For those verbs with more than one meaning, under which meaning, do they have their strongest ability of taking objects,and what kind of object are they? This paper divides into 14 categories the objects involved in the Dictionary of Chinese Verbs with Examples of Their Usage in the Language, and studies the number of verbs with different types of objects.In the sixth chapter, we investigate the forms of the verbs with objects, including the structure of "verb reduplication + object". Verb reduplication is a grammatical phenomenon unique in Chinese, in which a verb be used repeatedly, and some of them can take objects.Therefore we focus in this chapter on the characteristics of verb reduplication. Verb reduplication means that a verb can be used in a repeated form, which often implies special meanings.The seventh chapter makes an exhaustive examination of the verbs which can be followed with predicate objects. These verbs are extracted from the Dictionary of Chinese Verbs with Examples of Their Usage in the Language.Together with the corpus,the author discusses the issue of whether there exists a relationship of restriction and balance among those unconventional verb-object structures as well as their characteristics.The last chapter discusses a very common usage: verb-object structure's being used as the attribute of a headword of a nominal structure of modification. The author makes a detailed and systematic elaboration on predicate objects from these aspects: the criterion for determining a predicate-object structure's being used as a modifier, the omission of de, the choice of headword when the structure is used as an attributive, and the adjectival predicate object structures.