Forms of Subject
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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. In English, this is mostly limited to plural noun phrases and noun phrases headed by a mass noun.
- 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.
- A gerund. These can be shown to behave as noun phrases in many respects, for example, in being able to form determinerless phrases
- Eating is a pleasure.
- His constant hammering was very annoying.
- An infinitive. These can be shown to behave in many respects as embedded clauses, for example in allowing question words like "who."
- 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.
- That he had travelled the world was known by everyone.
- A direct quotation:
- I love you is often heard these days.
- The subject can also be implied. In the following command, the subject is the implied "you" that is the recipient of the imperative mood.
- Take out the trash!
- An expletive. 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. 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.
Read more about this topic: Subject (grammar)
Famous quotes containing the words forms of, forms and/or subject:
“The failure of women to produce genius of the first rank in most of the supreme forms of human effort has been used to block the way of all women of talent and ambition for intellectual achievement.”
—Anna Garlin Spencer (1851–1931)
“That food has always been, and will continue to be, the basis for one of our greater snobbisms does not explain the fact that the attitude toward the food choice of others is becoming more and more heatedly exclusive until it may well turn into one of those forms of bigotry against which gallant little committees are constantly planning campaigns in the cause of justice and decency.”
—Cornelia Otis Skinner (1901–1979)
“There are neither good nor bad subjects. From the point of view of pure Art, you could almost establish it as an axiom that the subject is irrelevant, style itself being an absolute manner of seeing things.”
—Gustave Flaubert (1821–1880)