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Abstract The concepts of “object” and “patient” are closely intertwined, which are difficult to distinguish by semantic features. From the perspective of heterophony, it can be found that: “V+patient” has no heterophony, while “V+object” has heterophony with the departing tone, that is, the “object” argument is usually marked besides by the “departing tone”, which may occasionally also be marked by “yu (于/於)”. This paper discusses the cases of “verb followed by patient argument” and “verb followed by object argument” with specific examples: 1. The “V+patient” structure where the verb is followed by the “patient” directly. As the most natural syntactic combination, it is usually unmarked without heterophony or preposition. 2. The “V+object” structure which involves three situations: (1) The unmarked “V+object” structure in which the verbs involved originally have an “object” as their complement, such as “cong (从)”, “zhui (追)”, “qiu (求)”, etc. (2) “V (departing tone)+object” structure marked by the “departing tone”. They are very conspicuous in the heterophony system of ancient Chinese for their various cases in use in a unified form (heterophony with the departing tone). According to the semantic features of the words before and after the heterophony, and the heterophony rules, they can be further divided into the following subcategories: i. Intransitive verbs/adjectives/nouns. In the case of heterophony with the departing tone, they add an object to become bivalent verbs, such as “hào Shen Shuzhan (号申叔展)” etc. ii. Transitive verbs. In the case of heterophony with the departing tone, they add an object to become trivalent verbs, such as “yù zhi gu (语之故)” etc. iii. Cases that use non-departing tone and departing tone to distinguish “V (non-departing tone)+patient” and “V (departing tone)+object”, such as “tou (投)”, “xue/xiao (学/效)”, “ting (听)”, etc. iii. Cases that cannot find the original word with the non-departing tone, but have the feature of “V (departing tone)+object”, such as “zhù (助)” etc. (3) “V (+patient)+于/於+object” structure marked by “yu (于/於)”. In this case, the verb has both “patient” and “object” arguments, among which the “patient” is unmarked (or not presented in the syntactic structure), and the “object” is marked by “yu (于/於)”, such as “献豜于公” etc.In summary: (1) When the verb originally has only one argument within the domain, it can be either a patient or an object, both unmarked; (2) When there are two arguments within the domain, the patient is unmarked, and the object is usually marked by the “departing tone” or “yu (于/於)”; (3) Intransitive verbs without arguments within the domain can introduce object arguments by heterophony with the “departing tone” or by using “yu (于/於)”. That is, the “patient” is unmarked, while the “object” is usually marked, and the two are clearly distinguished.Later, with the decline of heterophony, the loss of “yu (于/於)”, and the mutual extension of “object” and “patient”, a large number of unmarked “objects” appeared, and the distinction between “patient” and “object” became blurred. Against such a backdrop, this paper aims at proposing a preliminary idea for finding the boundary between the two again. This paper discusses the cases of “verb followed by patient argument” and “verb followed by object argument” with specific examples: 1. The “V+patient” structure where the verb is followed by the “patient” directly. As the most natural syntactic combination, it is usually unmarked without heterophony or preposition. 2. The “V+object” structure which involves three situations: (1) The unmarked “V+object” structure in which the verbs involved originally have an “object” as their complement, such as “cong (从)”, “zhui (追)”, “qiu (求)”, etc. (2) “V (departing tone)+object” structure marked by the “departing tone”. They are very conspicuous in the heterophony system of ancient Chinese for their various cases in use in a unified form (heterophony with the departing tone). According to the semantic features of the words before and after the heterophony, and the heterophony rules, they can be further divided into the following subcategories: i. Intransitive verbs/adjectives/nouns. In the case of heterophony with the departing tone, they add an object to become bivalent verbs, such as “hào Shen Shuzhan (号申叔展)” etc. ii. Transitive verbs. In the case of heterophony with the departing tone, they add an object to become trivalent verbs, such as “yù zhi gu (语之故)” etc. iii. Cases that use non-departing tone and departing tone to distinguish “V (non-departing tone)+patient” and “V (departing tone)+object”, such as “tou (投)”, “xue/xiao (学/效)”, “ting (听)”, etc. iii. Cases that cannot find the original word with the non-departing tone, but have the feature of “V (departing tone)+object”, such as “zhù (助)” etc. (3) “V (+patient)+于/於+object” structure marked by “yu (于/於)”. In this case, the verb has both “patient” and “object” arguments, among which the “patient” is unmarked (or not presented in the syntactic structure), and the “object” is marked by “yu (于/於)”, such as “献豜于公” etc.In summary: (1) When the verb originally has only one argument within the domain, it can be either a patient or an object, both unmarked; (2) When there are two arguments within the domain, the patient is unmarked, and the object is usually marked by the “departing tone” or “yu (于/於)”; (3) Intransitive verbs without arguments within the domain can introduce object arguments by heterophony with the “departing tone” or by using “yu (于/於)”. That is, the “patient” is unmarked, while the “object” is usually marked, and the two are clearly distinguished.Later, with the decline of heterophony, the loss of “yu (于/於)”, and the mutual extension of “object” and “patient”, a large number of unmarked “objects” appeared, and the distinction between “patient” and “object” became blurred. Against such a backdrop, this paper aims at proposing a preliminary idea for finding the boundary between the two again.
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2024, Vol. 54 
