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 poet’s eye, in a fine frenzy rolling,
Doth glance from heaven to earth, from earth to heaven;
And as imagination bodies forth
The forms of things unknown, the poet’s pen
Turns them to shapes, and gives to airy nothing
A local habitation and a name.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)
“It would be easy ... to regard the whole of world 3 as timeless, as Plato suggested of his world of Forms or Ideas.... I propose a different view—one which, I have found, is surprisingly fruitful. I regard world 3 as being essentially the product of the human mind.... More precisely, I regard the world 3 of problems, theories, and critical arguments as one of the results of the evolution of human language, and as acting back on this evolution.”
—Karl Popper (1902–1994)
“One may disavow and disclaim vices that surprise us, and whereto our passions transport us; but those which by long habits are rooted in a strong and ... powerful will are not subject to contradiction. Repentance is but a denying of our will, and an opposition of our fantasies.”
—Michel de Montaigne (1533–1592)