Toward a Theory of Subject Structure in Language with Application to Late Archaic Chinese

This article is intended to be an examination of the problem of distinction between subject and predicate in a sentence. In the light of current philosophical and linguistic works it is proposed that there should exist four levels of the subject-predicate distinction (epistemological, grammatical, logical, and ontological), which can be again classified into a surface structure and a deep structure. It is shown that the surface level of the surface structure and the deep level of the deep structure are always determinable by language and its use, whereas the deep level of the surface structure and the surface level of the deep structure need not be so determinable. This analysis of the subject structure permits an explanation of subjectless sentences in both relative and essential cases. Furthermore eight cases of the subject structure resulting from presence and absence of logical and grammatical subjects and from identity and difference between logical and grammatical subjects on the one hand and between grammatical and epistemological subjects on the other are logically presented. Finally many examples from late archaic Chinese are drawn to show the relevance and fruitfulness of this analysis of the subject structure in language

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