This study investigates the verb copy construction (VCC) in Chinese from diachronic and synchronic perspectives. The VCC has been posited as a post-verbal constraint (PVC). Given that the VCC and PVC did not exist in Old and Middle Chinese, this study examines how and why they emerged diachronically, and proposes that they are in fact a reaction to a syntactic and pragmatic/semantic conflict. The VCC emerged as a perfect reconciliation of this conflict. The other focus of the study is the formal analysis of the VCC in Lexical-Functional Grammar (LFG). In previous studies, the VCC has been...