Because of the semantics of the resultative verb compound, V2 must be able to denote a result or a change of state. Therefore, we may predict that Activity verbs describing actions, transitive or intransitive, or stative verbs, cannot act as resultative complements occurring in the slot of V2. Such verbs include stative verbs ‘dǒng’ (understand, know), ‘huì’ (be able to do), and intransitive activity verbs, like ‘kū’ (cry), ‘xiào’ (laugh), ‘zǒu’ (walk), ‘pǎo’ (run), etc. As shown:
1a. 李四懂英文。
Lǐ Sì dǒng Yīngwén.
(Lisi knows English.)
1b. 她在街上跑。
Tā zài jiē shàng pǎo.
(She was running in the street.)
[1] Loar, J. K. (2011). Chinese syntactic grammar: functional and conceptual principles. New York: Peter Lang.
