II. What can serve as a complement of result?

As seen earlier, the complement of result for sensory action verbs indicating perception is the verb jiàn见 (perceive). If the result focuses on comprehension, the complement would be the verb dǒng懂 (understand). So ‘understand what one hears’ would be tīngdǒng听懂and ‘understand what one sees or reads’ would be kàndǒng看懂. If the result focuses on completion, the complement would use the verb wán完 (finish). So ‘finish listening’ would be tīngwán听完 and ‘finish seeing or reading’ would be kànwán看完. These examples show that a variety of verbs can be suffixed to a verb to indicate a particular resultative aspect of an action. In addition, commendatory stative verbs can be used as complements indicating intended results while derogatory stative verbs are used for unintended results. For example, duì对 is a stative verb meaning ‘correct’ and cuò错 is one meaning ‘wrong’. So ‘write correctly’ is xiěduì写对 while ‘write incorrectly’ is xiěcuò写错. Duì对 is the intended result while cuò错 is not.