| Summary: | 碩士 === 國立臺灣師範大學 === 華語文教學研究所 === 100 === A special sentence pattern called "verb-copying sentence" (it is named "verb-copying construction" in this article) in Mandarin Chinese refers to the structure in which a verb is copied when it takes two elements—an object and a complement— for example, "ta kan shu kan lei le. " Previous studies usually focus on the syntactic constituents such as the verb or the complement, and apply these syntactic constituents to predict when a verb-copying construction should be used. However, simply discussing the syntactic constituents in the verb-copying construction cannot analyze the verb-copying construction’s characteristics in a complete and systematic manner. The study looks into the form and meaning of the verb-copying construction based on Goldberg’s(1995) Construction Grammar.
The syntactic form of verb-copying construction can be expressed as SV1OV2C, V1=V2. It corresponds to the central sense of "cause", expressing the meaning of "X cause Y become Z by W. " X、Y、Z、W represents the causer, causee, result, and force respectively. This article discusses the components of syntactic form in verb-copying construction, which correspond to the components of verb-copying construction. Force corresponds to V2, and result corresponds to C. The semantics of the complement decide which component of syntactic the causer and causee correspond to. If the semantics of the complement describes the verb, then the causer corresponds to S and the causee correspond to V1O, which expresses the meaning of "S cause V1O become C by V2. " If the semantics of the complement describes the subject, then the causer corresponds to V1O and the causee correspond to S, which expresses the meaning of "V1O cause S become C by V2. "
The example sentences in this article all come from the Academia Sinica Balanced Corpus of Modern Chinese and Udndata. According to the analysis of the results, it is found that the verb-copying construction has four surfaces in the form： SVOVC(le), SVOVdeC, SVOVdaoC, and SVOVleC. The SVOVC(le) form has the highest frequency of use. It is the prototype of verb-copying construction, and the other three are the extended forms. The result has also suggested that as long as "VO structure" is present, whenever one wants to convey the meaning of "cause" , the verb-copying construction has to be used.
The last part of this article is the pedagogical application. According to the statistical results of frequency of use, it is believed that the teaching sequence of the verb-copying construction should be SVOVC(le) → SVOVleC → SVOVdeC → SVOVdaoC. This research also suggested several common VO structures which contain the verb-copying construction, as a reference for teachers to compile their teaching materials.
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