| Verb-copying construction is a unique syntactic construction in Chinese in which a verb is copied, with the object following the former verb and the complement following the latter one, and the two verbs share the same subject. Such constructions as Ta kan shu kan lei le, Women deng ni deng leyige xiaoshi are called verb-copying constructions. The earliest study on the phenomenon of verb-copying starts with Theory of Chinese Grammar written by Wang Li (1944). From then on, many scholars have studied this construction from the syntactic, semantic and pragmatic angles, and much progress has been made. However, there are still some controversies related to this construction: The first controversy is concerned with the origin of verb-copying constructions. Based on case theory, many scholars believe that the application of verb-copying constructions results from Case Filter: the noun with phonological form must be case-marked. In Chinese a complement must be adjacent to the relative verb. As a result, the object can not be assigned case properly. In order to assign accusative case to the object, the original verb is copied to solve the contradiction between the object and the complement. However, some other scholars do not accept this kind of interpretation, because there are some counter examples in Chinese, such as Ta xiezi henkuai, in which the complement is not adjacent to the relative verb. We assume that the appearance of verb-copying constructions concerns the evolution of the language itself, and it is for the sake of emphasis. The second controversy is related to the classification of verb-copying constructions. According to different criteria, verb-copying constructions can be divided into different types. In this thesis, verb-copying constructions are firstly classified into two types: causative and non-causative. Then we further classify these two types into seven according to the semantic directions of different complements. The third controversy is related to the syntactic features of verb-copying constructions. Is a verb-copying construction a single-headed or a co-headed construction? Is the original verb the first verb or the second verb? What is the syntactic status of LE and DE? We believe that verb-copying construction is a single-headed construction, in which the first verb is copied, and the second verb is the original verb bearing all the properties of verbs. In addition, we have also discussed the specific features of verb-copying constructions and have reanalysed the derivation of these constructions within the framework of Minimalist Program.
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