With a historical viewpoint, this paper expounds and proves the origin of sentence Wangmian si le fuqin (王冕死了父亲). Si (死) can only occur in the“Object + V”construction at first. When sang (丧) produced the meaning of to “die” in the “Experiencer + V + Object” construction, it prompted the emergence of synonyms such as wang (亡) and si (死), which could be used in the same construction. The synonymous constructions competed against each other. Finally, sang (丧) was defeated, and si (死)took the place of sang (丧) but inherited its syntactic functions.

Shuai Zhisong