Yingjie Zhang

On the Subject Complement and its Basic Types in Chinese

Chinese subject complement has a very long history of existence since the West Han Dynasty. But as a grammatical term in Chinese, it is an unknown or unfamiliar concept. In fact, it always appears at the lower level of the predicate component and forms the subject-predicate relationship with the subject as a logical category of stating and being stated. For example, the sentence "我们│打‖赢了球" can be converted to: "我们打球，我们赢了" (The winner is the subject "我们")⑴ It goes without saying that the component of the original sentence "赢了球" is a subject complement. Because it is at the lower level of the predicate "打", and its logical relationship is directed to the sentence subject "我们" Compared to the components of subject complement, such as “完” in this sentence “我们│打完了‖球”（same as ⑴）, it's very different that its logical relationship just points to the "打" which is used as a predicate verb. Therefore, the sentence cannot be converted in the above-mentioned manner; otherwise “我们打球，我们完了”.— It is funny, or really confusing for “完” in the sentence that means the end of life or the entry into a critical situation.