All scientific research should be underpinned by previous research results. It can be argued that without this kind of inheritance, there can be no development, let alone breakthroughs. Jiaxuan Shen’s (沈家煊) parts of speech theory of “Noun–Verb Inclusion” is not an exception in this respect. Certainly, it has expanded upon the contributions of his predecessors, including Yuanren Zhao’s (赵元任) concept of “minor sentences”, Lü Shuxiang’s exploration of “flowing sentences”, and Dexi Zhu’s (朱德熙) proposition that verbs retain their inherent nature when functioning as subjects and objects.