subjects and objects

born2bwild

what is the subject of this sentence?

Is it 'what' or is it 'the subject of this sentence'?

Faith

I think the rule is that the subject is the one doing the action, and the object is being acted on. So in the sentence "The boy kicked the dog", the boy is the subject and the dog is the object.

I don't think there's any subject in that sentence. As far as I know, there has to be a verb involved. I'm very prepared to be wrong though.

born2bwild

Oh yeah thanks for the reply! - Sure the subject is the doer (except, of course, in the passive voice where the subject is the thing to which something is done ie: 'the donkey was shaved'). But I'm still a bit puzzzled-
What is the subject of this sentence does contain a verb, no? 'is'
Similarly look at these:
He is the president
She was my wife
Who is she?
DO these sentences contain subjects?

oscarBravo

born2bwild wrote: »

what is the subject of this sentence?

Is it 'what' or is it 'the subject of this sentence'?

Reword it: "The subject of this sentence is what?" "The subject" is the subject. Faith, "is" is a verb.

Faith

oscarBravo wrote: »

Reword it: "The subject of this sentence is what?" "The subject" is the subject. Faith, "is" is a verb.

I've been studying developmental neurobiology for the last few weeks. I can barely remember my name, never mind what constitutes a verb!

andala

born2bwild wrote: »

Similarly look at these:
He is the president
She was my wife
Who is she?
DO these sentences contain subjects?

In the first two sentences He and She are subjects of the verb to be. Verbs do not always describe an action, sometimes they denote a state.

Who is she is a subject question where the pronoun who replaces the subject.

NADA

What is the subject of this sentence? At a first glance the subject of the sentence is "what"? In English the subject is usually the Noun Phrase before the sentence. Consider the sentence John is a guy. Here John is the subject.

Your sentence is also contains what Chomsky calls structural ambiguity. here the phrase "subject of this sentence" could be all one big object. But in some cases "the subject" is the object and the "of this sentence" part of the Noun phrase is called an adjuct. Adjucts are option in sentences. For example one could have said "What is the subject?". Here although the semantics of the two sentences are not quite equivalent this is still grammatical.

Somebody above said that the subject is always the doer of the verb. But in the sentence "The Man was bitten by the dog". Going by the logic that then the subject of the sentence here should be "the dog" as the dog is doing the biting not the man. However this is false. The man is still the subject of this sentence. What governs subjecthood in English appears to be word order. This means that the first noun before the verb in an English sentence is the subject. Now as somebody said the subject is always the doer. This is usually true but not always. What is more true is that "agent" of the verb is the doer of the verb. And the "agent" of the verb is nearly always the subject in active sentences. The "patient" of the verb is what the verb is carried out on". The "patient" of the verb is nearly always the object. In most active sentences this comes after the verb. But in the passive sentence "The man was bitten by the dog" the agent is the dog but is the object and the man is the patient but the subject.

Consider the following sentences.

(1)John met mary. He kissed her.
(2) John had no interest in getting out of bed.It was raining.
In (1) He refers to John and her refers to mary.

Now what the subject of the sentence "It was raining" is "It". But what does "it" actually refer back to?

Oh and to the original question the "what" is replaced by the subject in the answer.

What is the new trend?
Wearing Pyjamas while shopping is the new trend. In essence what is just there is fill in the subject while we are looking for what it actually is. It is there to fill a gap until the answer assigns it some value.

born2bwild

yeah ,that sounds interesting but i don't get this 'adjunct' notion; what is the purpose of identifying it as such?

I usually identify subjects in sentences purely by virtue of syntax-before the verb, or after it in the case of questions using the verb 'be'.

Another thing: is it meaningful to talk about the object of a sentence, distinct from the object of a verb?

NADA

An adjunct is an optional piece of information. A sentence can be grammatical with or without one. "What is the subject of this sentence?" "What is the subject?" is also grammatical although different. Looking back at this again I'm not fully certain what the object of this sentence/verb is. Normally to test if something is an object we see can we replace the object by a pronoun. So "What is the subject of this sentence?" becomes "What is it?". This appears to work as the answer "it" becomes "the subject of this sentence" and the sentence "What is it?" is fine.

I kinda wish I hadn't started thinking of this. The verb "is" is really an interesting verb and technically it never has an object. It is what is known as a copula. Think about "The man is the owner". Here there actually is no object. "The man" is definately the subject. And "the owner" is what is known as a subject complement which we should think of as something that describes more about the subject. Other verbs that do this are "become" and "seem". He became the Primeminister for example. The problem with the sentence given above is that it is as WH question.

What is the subject of this sentence? WH questions are what are called filler-gap relations. Here the WH is filling in for the missing piece of information. THe answer to the question will obviously be of the form "The subject of this sentence is _what_____". As I explained the part before the is is the subject and the part after is the subject complement. So it appears that "The subject of this sentence" is the subject of the sentence given and the "what" is what is known as a subject complement.

As to whether or not we talk about objects of verbs or verbs. I think but I'm not 100% on this we talk about the arguments of verbs and the objects of the sentence. But the thing is a sentence can be viewed as a verb surrounded by arguments(ie subjects,objects etc.....) so I think it is safe to say the object of the verb. For example "The Coffee is too bitter to drink". The thing is that "The Coffee" is the subject of "is" and the object of "drink". Now this is not obvious but its way too complicated to explain. So here I think it's fair to talk about the object of sentences (as technically to drink is part of a different clause called the controlled clause(again complicated)). Dunno if this is clear but it seems to make sense to me

born2bwild

yeah I think the nub of my question has to do with the copular nature of verbs like 'be'.

it's interesting that you say that 'what' is not the subject but the subject complement of the question 'what is the subject of this sentence?'.

If I understand you, you're disregarding the position of 'what' before the verb and focussing on the 'what''s status as a 'filler'?

Following this logic, can we ever say that a 'Wh' is a subject; for example,
'Who lives here?'
'What drives you nuts about grammar?'

This seems odd because if we answer these questions:
joe lives here
or
syntax drives me nuts
then the 'missing' information is now in the subject question.

But these answers are, of course, different sentences.

Maybe in the questions...
What is the capital of Germany?
Who is the president of the Ukraine?
Which bus is the green bus?
What is the subject of this sentence?
(All of which seem grammatically identical to me)
... the 'Wh' is the subject and the info on the ohter side of the verb is the subject comlplement?

I think I'll eventually arrive out of this mist - I can't even remember what the POINT of my original question was.

NADA

Yes you are right! I was focusing on wh status as a filler in the question "What is the subject of this sentence?". Obviously this changes as you pointed out. Wh questions can also represent the subject. The what is filling in for the grammatical relation that we are missing. In the "What is the subject of this sentence" it appears we are missing a subject complement. In "Who lives here" the information we are missing is I subject. The answer is the form "________ lives here". Clearly the what is filling in as the first part of the answer so what is the subject?

I can see there you're coming from saying the "what" may be the subject of the sentence. But this is just not the case. Wh questions are filler are a typical example of a filler gap relation. The othe main one in the English language is the relative clause. For example " The man, that Mary loves ______, is going to china. Here The man fills the gap and is the object of love but simultaneously the subject of is. But lets not get side tracked. What Wh questions actually are, are requests for new information into a discourse. Think about this sentence. "Who did you say that Mary thinks that John loves "? Is it clear that the subject of this sentence is you? The other form is "You said that Mary thinks John loves __Anne______". When we look for the subject of a question phrase we actually look at the sentence when it is in the format of a statement. In the above instance the who? is actually the object of "love".