A Study On Potential Verb-Complement Construction Of Beijing Dialect Eversince Mid-Qing Dynasty

This paper studies the Potential Verb-Complement Construction of Beijing Dialect eversince Mid-Qing dynasty. We have selected three famous novels written in Beijing Dialect:A Dream of Red Mansion;Ernv Yingxiong Zhuan;Sishi Tongtang. They respectively represent Beijing novels written in the middle of 18 th, 19 th and 20 th century.In this paper, we make a thorough study in terms of Potential Verb-Complement Construction of the three books from syntactic,semantic and pragmatic level and from both synchronic and diachronic viewpoint.There are four types of the Potential Verb-Complement Construction:“V de/bu de(O)”“V de/bu C(O)”,“V de/bu liao(O)” and “VC le”. All of them coexist yet compete with each other in usage.“V de/bu de(O)”,which was mostly used in Yuan and Ming dynasty, has gradually declined in the competition with others.“V de/bu C(O)”has become the main construction to diliver potentiality in the three books.While the usage of“V de/bu liao(O) ” has been gradually increasing. “ VC le ”,which is generally used and well-developed in Shandong Dialect, is least-used in Beijing Dialect. Besides,auxiliary verb of potentiality are also frequently used.Its affirmative and negative form have a strong complement with Verb-Complement Construction of Potentiality.And there are innovative forms like the Combination of a verb-Complement Construction of potentiality and an auxiliary verb.They are found in the three books to strengthen the potentiality of sentences.