Abstract
This paper investigates the impact of verb compounding on the innovation of the shicheng construction in Classical Chinese. Early studies have speculated that compounding has to do with the emergence of shicheng. The exact correlation, nevertheless, remains unknown. In Classical Chinese, verb compounding begins with synonyms or near-synonyms coordinating into V1-V2 forms. Next, verbs of the same syntactic properties or functions also yield coordinative V1-V2 compounds. Certain types of V1-V2 compounds in temporal sequence undergo metaphorical extension to compounds in causal sequence due to context-induced reinterpretation; subsequently, a group of V2 changes into RESULT V2 brings about a series of analogies that causes V1-V2 compounds of different origin to be categorized into shicheng compounds. In other words, metaphorical extension is the motivation of the shicheng construction and compounding has its effect only on the process of analogy. It is the shared compounding form, i.e. RESULT V2 that makes the analogy possible.