The term "cognate/dummy (verb) object constructions" (henceforth DVOCs) used here refers to verb-object phrases where either the verb or the object is a "dummy" element. It intends to capture the fact that several Chinese counterparts of some English intransitive verbs are syntactically transitive. These verbs, in fact, require a complement or a direct object, and they have always a generic activity meaning, in the sense that the action denoted by the verbs is not applied to any one specific ent…