User:Styx&Valley/sandbox/Review



Summary:

This page mainly addressed the form of Subject Complement, a subcategory of predicate complement discussed by Kroeger in Chapter 10, while ignoring the use and constraints as well as the distribution in other languages. The case of stative verb (non-linking verb) complement in Chinese also lacks supportive materials to validate the proposed verbalization in that particular use, which I will prove to be misleading later in this review and suggest a better example. The examples of Tagalog (Kroeger) will also help generate a more comprehensive view. Furthermore, it seems that the article has an overemphasis on the subject of disjunctive pronoun, whose level of details was clearly in contrast with the succinct generalization in other parts, indicating that this article should be re-organized to give a more efficient view to its audience.

Possible Revising:


 * On the subject of the form and the constraints
 * The introductory paragraph gives succinct information and the general forms of Subject Complement, however failing to point out that besides AP and NP, PP can also function as a predicate complement as in sentence "His money is [under the mattress]PP. " (Kroeger).
 * Also, the introduction gives misleading statement that "a subject complement or predicative of the subject is a predicative expression that follows a linking verb (copula", which is not true because other verbs in English, such as became, seem, consider, etc. can also have predicate complement as in sentence "The Mayor seems [extremely angry]" (Kroeger). The same case also applies to other languages such as Spanish "Te ves cansado [you look tired]" or German "Du siehst so glücklish aus [ you look happy]".
 * The example section gives information about the use of predicative clause as subject complement, which Kroeger does not cover in his book but should be by all means important. Considering the case in English only, the structure proposed by Kroeger of S --> NP[SUBJ]          V       (NP)[OBJ]     (XP)[XCOMP] might be a useful description of the positional constraint of the predicate complements. Also, since there is not a separate Wikipedia page about the object complement, I think it might be a good idea to include it on this page. The essential difference between the two is just the assignment of the predicate, which is determined by the lexicality of the verbs (Kroeger) and might be sufficiently addressed in just one separate section.
 * On the subject of proper supporting materials
 * In the short section of Other Languages the author addressed a stative verb subject complement in Chinese, however lacking supportive materials to prove the assumption. Indeed, from a NSGJ test (I'm that Native speaker in this case :D) it seems very wrong to me. While the author assumes that "It is red is rendered as tā hóng" in some cases, the gloss for tā hóng (它红) as "it is red" is completely incorrect because the verbalized color aways denotes a idiomatic meaning. The hóng (红) in this case does not mean "is red" but rather "gaining popularity".Similarly, tā huáng (它黄) does not mean "it is yellow" or "it becomes yellow", but rather "it fails". The example therefore is not a static verb scenario but rather a dynamic verb, and hence has little to do with predicate complement. However, Chinese does have predicate complement in a verbless clause. For example, tā hěn hǎo [he very good] is translated as "he is very nice" in English however lacking the linking verb to connect the subject complement hěn hǎo. (Interestingly, the adverb hěn seems to be required for denoting good as a predicate and the similar requirement for an adverb also appears in other examples, whose rationale is mysterious to me for now). Kroeger also talked about the predicate complement in a verbless clause in Tagalog in Chp 10, indicating the wide distribution of this use.
 * On the overall structure
 * Ideally, as I proposed above, this page should expand to include the Object complement to offer a more comprehensive view of the area.
 * The general form and constraint of the predicate complement should be discussed in more details at front, and the proposed structure for English (Kroeger) could be also addressed there to clarify the it.
 * Disjunctive pronoun (French), Verbless clause (Chinese and Tagalog) can be grouped together in a section like "Variations in other languages" with possible external links. Besides, though it is good mention, the article should not take a stance on the disjunctive pronoun in English.