What are the differences in the characteristics of sentence structure in English and Chinese?

Eight basic structures: subject, predicate, object, predicate, definite, adverbial, complement and homonymous.

The subject is the main body of the sentence narrative, which is the same as the Chinese subject. A predicate describes the action or characteristics and states that the subject makes. The predicate is assumed by the verb.

The object is the object or recipient of the action, often after a transitive verb or preposition. Objects can be nouns, pronouns, numerals, nominalized adjectives, infinitives, gerunds, object clauses, etc.

The subject and the predicate are the two major components of an English sentence, and with the exception of a few sentences (such as imperative sentences and exclamation sentences), a sentence must have both the subject and the predicate to be complete. The subject is for the predicate, is the subject of a sentence, and the predicate is used to explain the situation of the subject and provide information for the subject.

For example: they are workingThe subject is they, so what are they doing?

It seems that it is not possible to work without a predicate. Under normal circumstances, the position of the subject and predicate in English is the same as in Chinese, that is, the subject comes first, and the predicate comes closely. The following is a list of which words can be the subject, the predicate, when the subject and verb are inverted, and how well the subject and the predicate are consistent.

Generally speaking, a sentence consists of two parts, the subject and the predicate. The subject is the object described by the sentence, and the predicate is the description of the subject.

For example, the subject tells you "who" or "what" the sentence says, and the predicate tells you what he or she "did" or "how".

Further, the subject of an English sentence must be a noun structure and the predicate must be a verb structure. For example, in the above sentence, the subject is a phrase formed around the noun car, and the predicate is a phrase formed around the verb stopped.

Some people think that Chinese sentences are the same as English, they are also "who + did what".

For example: Isn't this the classic "who + what"?

However, linguist Zhao Yuanren said in "Spoken Chinese Grammar": "The relationship between subject and predicate can be the relationship between the actor and the action. But in Chinese, the proportion of such sentences is not large, perhaps not much larger than 50%.

Therefore, in Chinese, it is more appropriate to treat the subject and predicate as topics and explanations, ......”

What does this mean? Let's look at an example:

This sentence can be divided into:

The subject of this sentence is 'immortal' and the predicate is 'a hundred years old'. However, the relationship between subject and predicate is not that of the actor and the action. Mr. Zhao Yuanren said that the relationship between subject and predicate is the relationship between topic and explanation.

"Immortality" is the topic, and "a hundred years old" is the explanation.

Here are some similar examples:

This is the basic structure of a Chinese sentence: subject (topic) + predicate (explanation).

The subject (topic) part can be "who + what did how". For example:

The predicate (description) part can also be "who + what did how". For example: