Modern Chinese V <sub> 1 </ Sub> + V To <sub> 2 </ Sub> Verb-object Structure

It is a common grammatical phenomenon in modern Chinese that a verb can act as an object of another matrix verb, the previous studies on which, however, are somewhat confined to its part of speech and grammatical function. To gain an overall understanding of the properties of this V,+V: verb-object structure, therefore, needsour more efforts. In hopes of promoting and enriching the study on this successive using of verbs, the present thesis makes an attempt to carry out an exploration on the external function and the internal relation of this Vi+V: verb-object structure in question.Based on a thorough examination of the constituent elements of the very structure by employing semantic-feature-analysis, the respective semantic patterns of V, and V: and the overall semantic patterns of their collocation have been successfully revealed. By doing this, the relative orders of the two constituent verbs in the V,+V: verb-object structure are generalized into being, and the chronological order principle they observe is also proposed. Furthermore, under the framework of Categorization Theory, and with its typical patterns and non-typical patterns being distinguished from each other, this thesis brings about a categorical analysis of the very structure. The structural ambiguity of the non-typical ones also receives a detailed description and analysis. Finally, an empirical account of the syntactic behaviors of the Vi+V: verb-object structure will be presented in this thesis as well.