Abstract: Collecting and analyzing typical dummy verbs in corpus, it is found that they mainly distribute in the sentence structure of
"agent + preposition + patient + dummy verbs + disyllable substantives". In this kind of typical distributional structure, dummy verbs
are used for case marking and the object is used for assigning semantic roles. In the deep structure of the sentences in which dummy
verbs are the predicate core, dummy verbs are responsible for labeling the event type. Chomsky's theories in Minimalist Program, such
as case theory and thematic theory are helpful for the research of the syntactic functions of dummy verbs.

Key words: dummy verbs, syntactic function, theta-role, case marking