Talk:Subject complement

message: Is this original work? RickK 05:37, 4 Dec 2003 (UTC)
replies: text: Obviously so. —Nightstallion (?) 19:10, 23 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: "This is she" sounds very odd in colloquial British English, but I believe this is not the case in American English - in an episode of Friends, Rachel says "This is she" when answering a phone call. (Edmund1989 13:20, 14 May 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: The whole section on that is a mess now. It's clearly nonsense anyway - people are trying to explain it coming from different viewpoints and they don't mix. Personally I would go with the French disjunctive pronoun argument, because clearly, it IS gramatically incorrect to say "it is I" but people reject this based on their prescriptive grammars (Edmund1989 (talk) 23:03, 23 March 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: Original researchhi

message: I just tossed in  'tis I parenthetically into the first line. To my ear, you can say 'tis I, but not 'tis me, even if we all accept "it's me". Agreement?samwaltz 15:25, 22 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: 'Tis I

message: There is a New Yorker cartoon in which the newly minted college graduate calls home and introduces himself with "It is I."  In fact, that is the entire text of the cartoon.  (Robert Day, 1956)  This topic and problem are certainly well-known, if not known well. Shenme 01:58, 13 November 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Popular references 

message: It seems to me that there are several things wrong with this article:
1. The opening statement "It is commonly held that..." Is it? By whom? I've yet to see a dictionary that lists "be" as a transitive verb, so you would need to be ignorant of grammar to suggest that 'be' can take an object. If this statement is to stand, I'd like to see it justified.
2. Who are the "prescriptive grammarians" (I've already changed the nonce word 'grammaticans') who regard "It's me" as a mistake? Certainly no current English grammar would say so, I think.
3. The use of "It's me" versus "It's I" is described as "rather common", which I think is inaccurate - it's later described more accurately: "the use of the subjective in the subject complement has almost entirely disappeared".
4. I agree that this should be part of the Subject complement article.
Unless there are objections, I'll return and make changes.
--Nyelvmark 20:54, 8 June 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I disagree with this merger. Subject complement is a very general concept, found in many languages. The debate over "It's I" versus "It's me" is quite specific to the English language. FilipeS 20:58, 11 June 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Accuracy? 

message: Note on French - "moi" is the disjunctive pronoun, which is why I have reverted to theprevious edit (Edmund1989 (talk) 18:30, 5 December 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: December 2007

message: What cases such as the following:
a) The boss took me to lunch.
b) The boss took Fred to lunch.
c) The boos took Fred and I to lunch.
The third usage is sadly common in spoken English, as the general lack of understanding of grammar seems to lead some speakers to prefer 'I' where 'me' would be correct.
I'm not sure that this is the proper page for this observation, but my guess is that someone else will know.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by Smitty1e (talk • contribs) 01:24, 15 May 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: May 2008

message: "For example, in Mandarin Chinese "It is red" is rendered as tā hóng..."
This sentence seems like a statement with a truth value of false. "Tā hóng," like "It red," is not grammatically correct.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 210.0.231.224 (talk) 03:36, 19 October 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  Chinese language example doesn't make sense 

message: "Prove"? What are the premises, the rules of inference, and the conclusion? 79.178.69.9 (talk) 17:45, 24 November 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: I reworded around this. -- Beland (talk) 22:02, 14 January 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  and as such they prove 

message: What is the difference between subject complement and predicative expression? Why do there need to be two separate articles? W. P. Uzer (talk) 12:04, 14 February 2015 (UTC)
replies: text: Hear, hear! --Kent Dominic·(talk) 02:45, 14 January 2021 (UTC)
thread_title: Explain 

message: I'm the child who has the temerity to point out what linguists' groupthink has ignored: The notion of a subject complement that "complements  the subject of the sentence" is as fundamentally flawed as it is incontrovertibly accepted. The flaw stems not from the premise that a stative complement " is a predicative expression that follows a linking verb (copula)" but from two enthymematic assumptions:
:1. That an adjectival adjunct  (e.g., "Only the crops unaffected by the drought are suitable for sale") is excluded from the subject complement definition.
:2. That a subject complement completes the meaning of a subject.
That second enthymematic assumption is exposed in such examples as follows:
*Where is your phone? Here it is.  (I.e., "here" is either the subject of the sentence or an adverbial subject complement that doesn't follow the copula but instead modifies "is".)
*Is that your phone? Yes, it is. (I.e. "it" is either the subject of the sentence or a subject complement that doesn't follow the copula.)
*Is it new? No, it's not. (I.e. "not" is a prototypical subject complement under traditional linguistic analysis, however...)
The third example most clearly illustrates the fundamental flaw in the subject complement paradigm: the word, "not" complements the copula rather the subject. My ESL students can grasp that explanation while they're interminably confused by the subject complement verbiage in textbooks.
:Where are they? < "Where" adverbially modifies the verb, "are"  rather than the subject, "they."
:They're home. < "home" adverbially modifies the verb, "are," rather than the subject, "they."
:Was she sure? < "sure" modifies the verb, "was" (i.e. her status) rather than the subject, "she."
:She sure was. < ibid
ESL students who attempt to apply the traditional subject complement paradigm can't easily determine whether "Where" = "they," whether "They" = "home," etc. ESL students have further difficulty interpreting the difference between, e.g.:
:1.  How was the deadline? (I.e. whether "How" constitutes a noun, pronoun, or adverb confounds ESL students who nonetheless use such questions by rote.)
:2.  The deadline was fine. (I.e. "fine" as an adjective that corresponds to "deadline" is readily grasped by ESL students.)
:3.  When was the deadline? (I.e. whether "When" constitutes a noun, pronoun, or adverb confounds ESL students who nonetheless use such questions by rote.)
:4.  The deadline was on Friday. (I.e. "on Friday" as an adverbial phrase is readily grasped when explained in terms of the deadline's "was" status.)
:5.  The deadline was Friday. (I.e. "Friday" as an adverbial that corresponds to "was" is not readily grasped due to limitations of the subject complement paradigm.)
:6.  The deadline was Friday. (I.e. "Friday" as an noun that corresponds to "deadline" is readily grasped.)
:7.  Yesterday was the deadline. (I.e. "deadline" as a noun that corresponds to "yesterday" is readily grasped.)
:8.  The deadline was yesterday. (I.e. "yesterday" as an adverbial that corresponds to "was" is not readily grasped due to limitations of the subject complement paradigm.) 
:9.  The deadline was yesterday. (I.e. "yesterday" as an noun that corresponds to "deadline" is readily grasped.)
:10. The deadline was on yesterday. (I.e. "on yesterday" as an adjectival phrase that corresponds to "deadline" is typical of ESL students' errors in their attempt to apply a flawed subject complement paradigm that construes predicative expressions vis-a-vis their correspondence to subjects rather than their correspondence to copulas.) 
Conclusion: The term subject complement, as universally adopted and typically explained, attempts to illustrate the nexus between a subject and predicative expression while obfuscating the more basic (and more practical) nexus between a stative verb and its argument. So instead of subject complement it should be stative complement. Such a paradigm shift would obviate explanations for sentences like, "It sure was,"  "They're here," and "The book-signing was Sunday afternoon."  Kent Dominic 11:28, 4 May 2019 (UTC)
thread_title:  May, 2019: The Emperor's New Clothes 

message: In the top section, I've replaced "Since copulas are stative verbs" with "Since linking verbs are intransitive". The original was incorrect in three ways:
# Copulas aren't all verbs. In some languages they're suffixes or even non-existent.
# Linking verbs aren't even all stative verbs. "Because" is both a linking verb and an action verb (non-stative verb).
# This statement is incorrectly given as the reason the verb doesn't affect subject complements. It's inherent in being a subject complement -- rather than an object -- that verbs don't affect it. It's about whether the verb is intransitive, not whether it's stative.
I would also support removing the phrase altogether since the rest of the sentence stands on its own in the context, and talking about transitivity could be read to imply that subject complements are some kind of object. Atkinson (talk) 19:06, 13 November 2022 (UTC)
thread_title:  Replaced "Since copulas are stative verbs"