Only one chinese linguist, the great C.-T. J. Huang, has ever had anything interesting to say about chinese, what he called the Phrase Structure Condition: Simplifying a little, it says that everything after the verb must either be a single phrase (e.g. the direct object), or the indirect object and then the direct object. If there are two verbs in series, the same rule applies to everything after the first verb but before the second one. So "I went to the store really fast" would not be valid in chinese, because [to the store really fast] is not a single phrase, but rather two phrases. In chinese, you'd need to say "I really fast went to the store", 我快快地去了商店. The notorious constructions with 把 and with verb-doubling exist to move stuff to the left of the verb so as to avoid breaking the rule. For example, "I put the book on the table" is not valid in chinese, because [the book on the table] is two phrases. You'd need to say "I 把 book put on the table", 我把书放在桌子上. Usually, 把 could be glossed as 'took', that is "I took the book [and] put [it] on the table.