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Linguistics & Grammar vocabulary · Clauses and Sentences

Subject

Meaning in linguistics & grammar, with examples

/ˈsʌbdʒɪkt/nounCore term

In linguistics & grammar, subject means: The part of a clause that usually names who or what does the action or is described, and that the verb agrees with, such as 'my sister' in 'My sister works here'.

In Turkish: özne

How it is used

In English the subject normally comes before the verb and cannot be left out, even when it carries no meaning (It is raining. There is a problem.). The subject pronouns are I, you, he, she, it, we and they.

Example sentences

  1. In 'The results surprised everyone', the subject is 'the results'.

  2. Turkish lets you drop the subject, but English needs one: say 'It is cold', not 'Is cold'.

Common collocations

  • subject and verb
  • subject pronoun
  • dummy subject
  • subject-verb agreement
  • objectA noun phrase or pronoun that receives the action of a verb or follows a preposition, such as 'the email' in 'She sent the email'.
  • predicateThe part of a clause that says something about the subject; it contains the verb and everything that follows it, such as 'missed the bus' in 'Emre missed the bus'.
  • agreementA rule that makes words in a sentence match each other in features such as number, person or gender, as when a singular subject takes a singular verb.
  • clauseA group of words that contains a subject and a verb and forms a sentence or part of a sentence, such as 'because it was raining'.
  • sentenceA group of words that expresses a complete idea and is grammatically complete; in writing it starts with a capital letter and ends with a full stop, question mark or exclamation mark.

More terms: Clauses and Sentences

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