A Formal Analysis of the Verb Copy Construction in Chinese

This paper presents a formal analysis of the verb copy construction in modern Chinese. Unlike previous analyses, in which this construction is analyzed as a single-headed structure with the second VP as the head and the first VP as an adjunct, our analysis treats the verb copy construction as a coordinated VP, with each VP as a co-head. We further propose that the first VP subsumes the following VPs in this construction. We also show that this alternative approach can successfully capture and explain all of the key properties that characterize this construction.