The purpose of this paper is to account for the diachronic change of ‘V+P+O(R)+O(T)’, one of ditransitive constructions in Chinese. In modern Chinese, the argument alignment pattern of ‘V+P+O(R)+O(T)’ construction is the same as that of ‘V+O(R)+O(T)’ construction except for having a ‘P’ following ‘V’. But these two constructions have undergone different diachronic changes. According to the diachronic investigation of Chinese corpus, there is a strong possibility to assume that the ‘V+P+O(R)+O(T)’ construction was developed from the ‘V+P+(O)’ construction which focalized the recipient argument contrary to ‘V+O(T)’ focalizing the theme argument. Its theme argument was additionally supplemented later because ‘V+P’ was reanalyzed as a ditransitive verb.
