Subject (grammar)
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The subject of a sentence is (in English) an obligatory sentence element. It is also one of the two main parts of a sentence, the other being the predicate.
Mr Bibby danced.
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.e. objects, complements and adverbials.
The subject is a sentence element, and should be distinguished from parts of speech, which classify expressions within elements.
Forms of subject
The subject is a noun phrase in the sentence and can be realised by the following forms.
Builders are at work.
The large car stopped outside our house.
Eating is a pleasure.
To read is easier than to write
That he had travelled the world was known by everyone.
'I love you' is often heard these days.
Definitions of Subject
The subject of a sentence is sometimes defined as the argument that generally refers to the origin of the action or the undergoer of the state shown by the predicate. This is a semantic definition. Such a definition is problematic for several reasons. In languages where a passive voice exists, the subject of a passive verb may be the target or result of the action. For example:
- John was arrested.
- The police arrested John.
In the first sentence (which is in the passive voice), John is the subject, while in the second sentence (active voice) the police is the subject and John is the object. Similarly, some verbs can be used both as transitive and as intransitive. An example is the English verb break:
- John broke the chain.
- The chain broke.
In the first sentence, the chain is the object, while in the second, it is the subject. But the relation of the chain to the event described by the sentence is the same in the two cases. This can be seen by considering the fact that the two sentences can be used to describe the same situation: Whenever the first sentence is true, the second one will be true, as well.
Some linguistic theories require every language to have a category of subject. However, there is no such category that is consistent for all languages.
In many languages, the subject triggers agreement morphology on the verb or auxiliary of a sentence. For example, in English one uses the form has for sentences with a singular subject, and have in sentences with a plural subject. This is a morphosyntactic definition.
- She has left.
- They have left.
This definition works fairly well for English, except in the case of verbs that do not agree. Examples of English verbs that never carry agreement include the modals must, can, will, might, may.
In many languages that mark case on the arguments of a verb, the topic of the conversation tends to be placed in the nominative case, and this combination is termed the subject. However, sometimes the subject may carry other cases, like the dative, so this definition is not perfect. Not all languages have a nominative case, and for many of these this concept of subject does not work at all: in ergative-absolutive languages neither core case, absolutive or ergative, carries the topic the way the nominative does in many nominative-accusative languages. Different theoretical traditions have treated both as subject at different times, but with no agreement.
In languages that lack verb agreement and morphological case marking, one must define the nominative case (if there is one) 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 object.
Finally, the subject tends to be the topic of the proposition. In languages with no other means to mark a topic, making an object into a subject by using passivization (I did it → it was done) is a way to topicalize said object. (See also topic-prominent languages.)
Some languages can omit the subject if it is recoverable from the context of utterance (null subject language). Many of these languages have rich subject-verb agreement (e. g. Italian) while others have no subject-verb agreement at all (Mandarin Chinese). The term pro-drop language is used for languages where pronouns can be omitted more generally, i. e. even when they are not a subject.
In some languages, like English or French, sentences must always have a syntactical subject, either a noun or noun phrase, or a pronoun, even if there is no semantic subject. This is why verbs like rain must carry a "subject" such as it, even if nothing is actually "doing" the raining. It is in this case an expletive and a dummy pronoun.
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.br:Rener (yezhadur) ca:Subjecte cs:Podmět da:Subjekt (grammatik) de:Subjekt (Grammatik) es:Sujeto (gramática) fr:Sujet (grammaire) he:נושא ja:主語 nl:Onderwerp (subject) pl:Podmiot (gramatyka) sv:Subjekt wa:Sudjet zh:主語