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    Sentence Subjects

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    Claudia Micu
    The document discusses sentence subjects. It defines the subject as the person, place, thing or idea doing or being something in the sentence. To identify the subject, ask who or what is performing the verb. The simple subject is the core subject without modifiers. Sometimes a clause can be the simple subject. The understood subject is usually left out of commands. In passive sentences, the subject is not the agent performing the action. Subject-verb order is normally subject-verb-object but can be inverted for questions, expletives, attributing speech, emphasis, or literary effect.

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    Sentence Subjects

    Uploaded by

    Claudia Micu
    38 views3 pages
    The document discusses sentence subjects. It defines the subject as the person, place, thing or idea doing or being something in the sentence. To identify the subject, ask who or what is performing the verb. The simple subject is the core subject without modifiers. Sometimes a clause can be the simple subject. The understood subject is usually left out of commands. In passive sentences, the subject is not the agent performing the action. Subject-verb order is normally subject-verb-object but can be inverted for questions, expletives, attributing speech, emphasis, or literary effect.

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    The document discusses sentence subjects. It defines the subject as the person, place, thing or idea doing or being something in the sentence. To identify the subject, ask who or what is performing the verb. The simple subject is the core subject without modifiers. Sometimes a clause can be the simple subject. The understood subject is usually left out of commands. In passive sentences, the subject is not the agent performing the action. Subject-verb order is normally subject-verb-object but can be inverted for questions, expletives, attributing speech, emphasis, or literary effect.

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    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as DOC, PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as doc, pdf, or txt
    38 views3 pages

    Sentence Subjects

    Uploaded by

    Claudia Micu
    The document discusses sentence subjects. It defines the subject as the person, place, thing or idea doing or being something in the sentence. To identify the subject, ask who or what is performing the verb. The simple subject is the core subject without modifiers. Sometimes a clause can be the simple subject. The understood subject is usually left out of commands. In passive sentences, the subject is not the agent performing the action. Subject-verb order is normally subject-verb-object but can be inverted for questions, expletives, attributing speech, emphasis, or literary effect.

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    SENTENCE SUBJECTS

    The subject of a sentence is the person, place, thing, or idea that is doing or being
    something. You can find the subject of a sentence if you can find the verb. Ask the
    question, "Who or what 'verbs' or 'verbed'?" and the answer to that question is the subject.
    For instance, in the sentence "The computers in the Learning Center must be replaced,"
    the verb is "must be replaced." What must be replaced? The computers. So the subject is
    "computers." A simple subject is the subject of a sentence stripped of modifiers. The
    simple subject of the following sentence is issue:

    The really important issue of the conference, stripped of all other considerations,
    is the morality of the nation.

    Sometimes, though, a simple subject can be more than one word, even an entire
    clause. In the following sentence —

    What he had already forgotten about computer repair could fill whole volumes,

    —the simple subject is not "computer repair," nor is it "what he had forgotten," nor is it
    "he." Ask what it is that "could fill whole volumes." Your answer should be that the
    entire underlined clause is the simple subject.

    In English, the subject of a command, order, or suggestion — you, the person being
    directed — is usually left out of the sentence and is said to be the understood subject:

     [You] Step lively there or I'll leave you behind!


     Before assembling the swingset, [you] read these instructions carefully.

    For purposes of sentence analysis, the do-er or the initiator of action in a sentence is
    referred to as the agent of the sentence. In an active sentence, the subject is the agent:

     The Johnsons added a double garage to their house.


     The jury returned a verdict of manslaughter.
    In a passive sentence, the agent is not the subject. In fact, sometimes a passive sentence
    will not contain an agent.
     The dean's report was reviewed by the faculty senate.
     Three cities in the country's interior were bombed.

    Subject-Verb Inversion
    The normal English order of subject-verb-completer is disturbed only occasionally
    but under several circumstances. Burchfield* lists about ten situations in which the
    subject will come after the verb. The most important of these are as follows (subjects in
    blue):

    1. In questions (routinely): "Have you eaten breakfast yet?" "Are you ready?"
    2. In expletive constructions: "There were four basic causes of the Civil
    War." "Here is the book."
    3. In attributing speech (occasionally, but optionally): "'Help me!' cried Farmer
    Brown."
    4. To give prominence or focus to a particular word or phrase by putting the
    predicate in the initial position: "Even more important is the chapter dealing
    with ordnance."
    5. When a sentence begins with an adverb or an adverbial phrase or clause:
    "Seldom has so much been owed by so many to so few."
    6. In negative constructions: "I don't believe a word she says, nor does my
    brother. Come to think of it, neither does her father."
    7. After so: "I believe her; so does my brother."
    8. For emphasis and literary effect: "Into the jaws of Death, / Into the mouth of
    Hell / Rode the six hundred."**

    There are other uses of inversion, but most of those result in a strained or literary
    effect.

    *The New Fowler's Modern English Usage edited by R.W. Burchfield. Clarendon Press: Oxford, England.
    1996. Used with the permission of Oxford University Press. Examples our own.

    **from Alfred Lord Tennyson's "Charge of the Light Brigade" (1854).


    For additional help in
    identifying and working
    with subjects, see Chapter
    3 of Sentence Sense: A
    Writer's Guide.</SPAN<
    td>

    Identifying Simple and Compound Subjects

    Guide to Grammar Principles of


    Index 
    and Writing Composition

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