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In the sentences below, the subjects are indicated in boldface.
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According to a tradition that can be tracked back to Aristotle, every sentence can be divided in two main constituents, one being the subject of the sentence and the other being its predicate. In syntactic analysis a constituent is a word or a group of words that functions as a single unit within a hierarchical structure In traditional Grammar, a predicate is one of the two main parts of a sentence (the other being the subject, which the predicate modifies In English, subjects govern agreement on the verb or auxiliary verb that carries the main tense of the sentence, as exemplified by the difference in verb forms between he eats and they eat. In Languages agreement is a form of cross-reference between different parts of a sentence or phrase Grammatical tense is a temporal linguistic quality expressing the time at during or over which a state or action denoted by a verb occurs
The subject has the grammatical function in a sentence of relating its constituent (a noun phrase) by means of the verb to any other elements present in the sentence, i. In Linguistics, grammatical functions or ( grammatical relations) refer to syntactic relationships between Parts of speech such as subject In grammatical theory, a noun phrase (abbreviated NP) is a Phrase whose head is a Noun or a Pronoun, optionally accompanied For English usage of verbs see the wiki article English verbs. e. objects, complements and adverbials. An object in Grammar is a Sentence element and part of the sentence predicate. In Grammar the term complement is used with different meanings In Grammar an adverbial is a word (an Adverb) or a group of words (an adverbial Phrase or an adverbial Clause) that modifies or tells us something
The subject is a phrasal constituent, and should be distinguished from parts of speech, which, roughly, classify words within constituent. In Grammar, a lexical category (also word class, lexical class, or in traditional grammar part of speech) is a linguistic category of words (or A word is a unit of Language that carries meaning and consists of one or more Morphemes which are linked more or less tightly together and has a Phonetic
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Forms of subject
The subject is a noun phrase in the sentence and can be realised by the following forms
- A determinerless noun phrase, also called a bare noun phrase. Linguistics is the scientific study of Language, encompassing a number of sub-fields Theoretical linguistics is the branch of Linguistics that is most concerned with developing models of linguistic knowledge Phonetics (from the Greek φωνή ( phonê) "sound" or "voice" is the study of the physical sounds of human speech Phonology ( Greek φωνή (phōnē voice sound + λόγος (lógos word speech subject of discussion is the systematic use of sound to encode meaning Morphology is the field of Linguistics that studies the internal structure of words In Linguistics, syntax (from Ancient Greek grc συν- syn-, "together" and grc τάξις táxis, "arrangement" is the In Linguistics, lexis (in Greek λέξις = word describes the storage of language in our mental Lexicon as prefabricated patterns ( Lexical units Semantics is the study of meaning in communication The word derives from Greek σημαντικός ( semantikos) "significant" from Lexical semantics is a subfield of linguistic Semantics. It is the study of how and what the words of a language denote (Pustejovsky 1995 Statistical Semantics is the study of "how the statistical patterns of human word usage can be used to figure out what people mean at least to a level sufficient for information access" Logical positivism asserts that structural semantics is the study of relationships between the meanings of terms within a sentence and how meaning can be composed from smaller elements Prototype Theory is a mode of graded Categorization in Cognitive science, where some members of a category are more central than others Pragmatics is the study of the ability of Natural language speakers to communicate more than that which is explicitly stated Applied linguistics is an interdisciplinary field of study that identifies investigates and offers solutions to language-related real life problems One hotly debated issue is whether the biological contribution includes capacities specific to language acquisition often referred to as Universal grammar. Psycholinguistics or psychology of language is the study of the psychological and neurobiological factors that enable Humans to acquire use Sociolinguistics is the study of the effect of any and all aspects of Society, including cultural norms expectations and context on the way Language is used Linguistic anthropology is that branch of Anthropology that brings linguistic methods to bear on anthropological problems linking the analysis of Semiotic Generative linguistics is a school of thought within Linguistics that makes use of the concept of a Generative grammar. In Linguistics and Cognitive science, cognitive linguistics (CL refers to the school of linguistics that understands language creation learning and usage Computational linguistics is an Interdisciplinary field dealing with the statistical and/or rule-based modeling of Natural language from a computational Descriptive linguistics is the work of analyzing and describing how Language is spoken (or how it was spoken in the past by a group of people in a speech community Historical linguistics (also called diachronic linguistics) is the study of language change Comparative linguistics (originally comparative Philology) is a branch of Historical linguistics that is concerned with comparing languages in order to Etymology is the study of the History of Words &mdash when they entered a language from what source and how their form and meaning have changed over time Stylistics is the study of varieties of Language whose properties position that language in context. In Linguistics, prescription can refer both to the codification and the enforcement of rules governing how a language is to be used Corpus linguistics is the Study of language as expressed in Samples ( corpora) or "real world" text See also History of grammar Linguistics as a study endeavors to describe and explain the human faculty of Language. A linguist in the academic sense is a person who studies Linguistics. This article discusses currently unsolved problems in Linguistics. In English, this is mostly limited to plural noun phrases and noun phrases headed by a mass noun. Plural is a Grammatical number, typically referring to more than one of the Referent in the real world In Linguistics, a mass noun (also uncountable noun or non-count noun) is a common Noun that presents entities as an unbounded mass
- Builders are at work.
- A noun phrase introduced by a determiner. This complex (determiner + noun phrase) is usually called a determiner phrase:
- The large car stopped outside our house. In Linguistics, a determiner phrase (DP is a syntactic category a phrase headed by a Determiner.
- A gerund. In Linguistics, “gerund” is a term used to refer to various non-finite verb forms in various languages As applied to English, These can be shown to behave as noun phrases in many respects, for example, in being able to form determiner phrases
- Eating is a pleasure.
- His constant hammering was very annoying.
- An infinitive. In Grammar, infinitive is the name for certain verb forms that exist in many languages These can be shown to behave in many respects as embedded clauses, for example in allowing question words like "who. A dependent clause cannot stand alone as a sentence. In itself a dependent clause does not express a complete Thought; therefore it is usually attached to an "
- To read is easier than to write.
- Whom to hire is a difficult question.
- A full clause, introduced by the complementizer that, itself containing a subject and a predicate. In Grammar, a clause is a word or group of words that consists of a subject and a predicate, although in some Languages and some types of A complementizer, as used in Linguistics (especially Generative grammar) is a syntactic category ( part of speech) roughly equivalent to the term
- That he had travelled the world was known by everyone.
- A direct quotation:
- I love you is often heard these days. For the Wikipedia quotation templates see:CategoryQuotation templates.
- The subject can also be implied. In the following command, the subject is the implied "you" that is the recipient of the imperative mood. The imperative mood is a Grammatical mood that expresses direct commands or requests
- Take out the trash!
- An expletive. The word expletive is currently used in three senses syntactic expletives, expletive attributives, and "bad language". These are words like it or there when they don't refer to any thing or place. For example in the following sentence "it" doesn't refer to anything.
- It rains.
- A cataphoric it. In Linguistics, cataphora is used to describe an expression that co-refers with a later expression in the discourse This is the use of it when it is co-referent with a subordinate clause that comes after it.
- It was known by everyone (that) he had travelled the world.
Definitions of subject
The concept of subject is sometimes mixed with that of actor or agent and other times with that of carrier of attributes. In Linguistics, a grammatical agent is the Participant of a situation that carries out the action in this situation When this happens, it is defined as the argument that generally refers to the origin of the action or the undergoer of the state shown by the predicate. A syntactic verb argument, in Linguistics, is a Phrase that appears in a relationship with the Verb in a Clause. This definition takes the representation of the sentence into account, but it is problematic for several reasons. Semantics is the study of meaning in communication The word derives from Greek σημαντικός ( semantikos) "significant" from While interpreting the subject as the actor or agent of the action, two rather different concepts are overlayed. For instance, in the passive voice the subject is the goal, middle or target of the action; for example:
- John was arrested by the police. In Grammar, the voice (also called gender or diathesis of a verb describes the relationship between the action (or state that the verb expresses and the participants identified
- The police arrested John.
In the first sentence (which is in the passive voice), the subject is John, while in the second sentence (active voice) it is the police. But when it comes to the representation the action, the actor in both sentences is the police and the goal of the action is John.
Similarly, some verbs can be used both transitively and intransitively. In Syntax, a transitive verb is a Verb that requires both a subject and one or more objects Some examples of sentences with transitive verbs In Grammar, an intransitive Verb does not take an object. In more technical terms an intransitive verb has only one argument (its subject An example of these is the English verb break:
- John broke the chain.
- The chain broke.
In the first sentence, the subject is John, while in the second one it is the the chain. But in the representation of the action or event, the chain plays the same role in both cases, that being the one to which the process is done or happens. This can be seen by considering the fact that the two sentences can be used to describe the same happening. Whenever the first sentence is true, the second one will be true as well, though in the second one it is pictured to have happened without an agent.
Subject in contrastive linguistics
The subject was firstly defined to be the main argument of a proposition. Since then, linguistic theories have been developed to describe languages all over the world. Some theories, such as Systemic Functional Theory, claim all clauses must have a subject no matter what language is being described. Other theories claim there is no such category that is consistent for all languages. In English, though, every clause has a subject.
A subject in English typically matches two types of pattern: agreement and word order. It both agrees with the verb group of its clause and is positioned in certain particular ways. The agreement consists of choosing one of two different forms of the verb (three in the case of the verb be) depending on the number and person of its subject. For instance, if a subject is singular and is a third person, i. e. it is neither the speaker nor the listeners, one chooses the form has of the verb have; otherwise one chooses have. See examples below:
- She has left.
- They have left.
- I have left.
- We have left.
- You have left.
This pattern of agreement is not an absolute rule, because not all verbs have two different forms. Some have only one and never vary in form. E. g. : must, can, will, might, may.
- She must leave.
- They must leave.
- I must leave.
- We must leave.
- You must leave.
The second pattern of a subject in English is its position in relation to the verb group. When affirming or denying something, one usually places the subject right before the verb group. But when asking a question, one changes the word order by placing the subject after part of the verb group. In Linguistics, word order typology refers to the study of the different ways in which languages arrange the constituents of their sentences relative to each other and the systematic This means one makes an interrogative clause by changing the declarative word order. Declarative may refer to Declarative programming Declarative learning Declarative memory Declarative Thus an assertion is turned into a question by making a word order change. See the following examples:
- You won't call me.
- Won't you call me?
Subjects also follow a third pattern. For instance, in English, the pronoun I is usually a subject while me is usually a complement. This system of language that allows us to determine the arguments of a proposition by inflection is called declension and each form is a case of the declining system. In Grammar, the case of a Noun or Pronoun indicates its Grammatical function in a greater Phrase or Clause; such as the In other languages like German, Russian, Latin and Greek, every noun group assumes a case to represent a specific argument of its proposition. The case assumed by subjects is usually (but not always) the one named nominative. The nominative case is a Grammatical case for a Noun, which generally marks the subject of a Verb, as opposed to its object or other Sometimes the subject carries other cases, like the accusative or the dative, depending on the clause structure and the language. The accusative case ( abbreviated ACC) of a Noun is the Grammatical case used to mark the Direct object of a Transitive The dative case is a Grammatical case generally used to indicate the Noun to whom something is given Yet other languages, such as Japanese, use a postposition system to determine the arguments of a clause. The classic theorists were very concerned about this language system for both Latin and Greek had declensions, but this is not a concern in modern English grammars anymore, though English has three noun cases (nominative, genitive and an unnamed one):
- My eyes are blue.
- The lacrimal gland is also part of the eye's defense system.
- It's a one-eyed beast called a Cysquatch.
However, none of theses patterns can be used as a universal pattern of the subject. Not all languages have a subject-verb agreement in verb forms (person and number), noun forms (case, postpositions) or distinctive word orders. And none of these patterns safely determines the subject.
The case system, for instance, is not a universal system that works the same way in all languages. In some languages, when the ergative model is foregrounded, the transitive/intransitive distinction does not affect the cases of the complements. The middle to which some process is done or happens carries the same case no matter if it is the subject or a complement of the verb. In other languages, of which German, Latin and Greek are examples, the subject keeps its case for transitive and intransitive uses of a verb and its quite safe to consider it case-determined.
In languages that lack verb and noun forms for determining the subject, one must determine the subject in terms of word order. For example, in Mainland Scandinavian (Norwegian, Swedish and Danish) the subject occurs either right in front of the tensed verb of a sentence, or follows the verb but precedes the complements.
Finally, in the Topic theory, which is similar but not equivalent to the Theme theory of the School of Prague, the subject is also the topic of a proposition in the default word order. In Linguistics, the topic (or theme) is the part of the proposition that is being talked about ( predicated) According to this theory, some languages have no means to determine a topic but by making a complement into a subject. So ascribing a passive voice to the verb group is a way to topicalize the said complement: (See also topic-prominent languages. In Grammar, the voice (also called gender or diathesis of a verb describes the relationship between the action (or state that the verb expresses and the participants identified A topic-prominent language is a language that organizes its Syntax so that sentences have a topic–comment (or theme–rheme structure in which the )
- I did it.
- It was done.
- The duke gave my aunt this teapot.
- My aunt was given this teapot by the duke.
Another pattern of the subject is the frequency in which it is ellided (removed/dropped) from the clause. Some languages, like Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, Latin, Greek, Japanese and Mandarin, use this pattern both in assertions and questions. Though most of these languages are rich in verb forms for determining the person and number of the subject, Japanese and Mandarin have no such forms at all. This dropping pattern does not automatically make a language a pro-drop language. A pro-drop language (from "pronoun-dropping" is a Language in which certain classes of Pronouns may be omitted when they are in some sense pragmatically For these concerns visit the pro-drop language article. A pro-drop language (from "pronoun-dropping" is a Language in which certain classes of Pronouns may be omitted when they are in some sense pragmatically In other languages, like English, French and German, declarative and interrogative clauses must always have a subject, which should be either a noun group or a clause. This is also true when the clause has no element to be represented by it. This is why verbs like rain must carry a subject such as it, even if nothing is actually being represented by it. In this case it is an expletive and a dummy pronoun. The word expletive is currently used in three senses syntactic expletives, expletive attributives, and "bad language". A dummy pronoun (formally expletive pronoun or pleonastic pronoun) is a type of Pronoun used in non- Pro-drop languages such as English In imperative clauses, though, most languages ellide the subject:
- Give it to me.
- Dā mihi istud. (Latin)
- Me dá isso. (Portuguese in Brazil)
- Dá-me isso. (Portuguese in Portugal)
- Dámelo. (Spanish)
- Datemi. (Italian)
Subject orientation
The subject of a sentence is often privileged in various ways pertaining to its relation to other expressions in the sentence. One says that these other expressions are "subject-oriented". Examples of subject-oriented expressions include subject-oriented adverbs. Compare the following two sentences:
- Clumsily, Al sat down.
- Al sat down clumsily.
The first sentence means that it was clumsy of Al to sit down (though the manner in which he did so may have been elegant). The second can also mean that the manner in which Al sat down was clumsy (while it may have been highly appropriate to sit down in the first place).
Reflexive pronouns are sometimes subject-oriented. In the following sentence herself is a reflexive pronoun.
- Sue assigned the best student to herself.
This sentence can only mean that Sue assigned the best student to Sue, not that she assigned the best student to the best student.
Subject, predicates and the copula
It is generally assumed that the Noun Phrase occurring with the Verb Phrase, constituting a sentence, is a subject. Copular sentences challenge this view. In a particular class of copular sentences, called "inverse copular sentences", the noun phrase which occurs with the verb phrase plays the role of predicate, occupying the position which is canonically reserved for subjects, and the subject is embedded in the verb phrase (cf. copula). This can be exemplified by pairs of sentences like these pictures of the wall are the cause of the riot (where the preverbal Noun Phrase plays the role of subject and the post-verbal one plays the role of predicate) vs the cause of the riot is these pictures of the wall (where the order is inverse). This has far reaching consequences, affecting for example the theory of expletive subjects and unaccusative verbs (cf. The word expletive is currently used in three senses syntactic expletives, expletive attributives, and "bad language". In Linguistics, an unaccusative verb is an Intransitive verb whose ( syntactic) subject is not a ( semantic) agent; that Moro 1997 and Hale - Keyser 2003 and references cited there).
References
- Everaert, M. ; van Riemsdijk, H. ; Goedemans, R. (eds) 2006. The Blackwell companion to syntax, Volumes I–V, Blackwell, London.
- Hale, K. ; Keyser, J. (2002). "Prolegomena to a theory of argument structure", Linguistic Inquiry Monograph, 39, MIT Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts.
- Halliday, M. A. K & Matthiessen, Christian M. I. M (2004). Subject, actor, theme in An introduction to functional grammar. Hodder Arnold, London, England.
- Huddleston, R. ; Pullum, K. (2005). A student's introduction to English grammar. Cambridge University Press.
- Moro, A. (1997). The raising of predicates: predicative noun phrases and the theory of clause structure, Cambridge Studies in Linguistics, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, England.
See also
An object in Grammar is a Sentence element and part of the sentence predicate. In Linguistics, a subjective pronoun is a Personal pronoun that is used as the subject of a sentence In Linguistics, a sentence is a grammatical unit of one or more words bearing minimal syntactic relation to the words that precede or follow it often preceded and followedDapyx Software network: MP3 Explorer | Ebook Manager | Zenithic