grammatical subject
- noun
- /ˈɡræmətɪkəl ˈsʌbdʒɪkt/
- Specialized
:
sujeto gramatical
- In the sentence, "The dog barked loudly," the dog acts as the grammatical subject that performs the action.
- the grammatical subject and the verb
Examples
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In Vande Kopple's sample, 20% of the sentences had grammatical subjects longer than the remainder of the t-unit ("Characteristics" 538).
Academic text (2002) -
In both sentences, the grammatical subject (in bold) contains the longest string of nouns as well as the most technical scientific information.
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The connection of the verb "connect" at the end of line 7 to its grammatical subject is a curious one.
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In fact, one must return to the very beginning of the poem to find line 5's grammatical subject.
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This shifting of focus is formally registered by the constant shifts between two grammatical subjects: Miriam and Paul.
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Words do not tend to get picked up from one stanza to the next, and grammatical subjects are mostly isolated in single stanzas.
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It doesn't matter which language form appears in the subject; when research is the grammatical subject, the verb tends to be a reporting verb.
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English-language readers expect a verb to follow fairly swiftly after its grammatical subject, but poems often separate the two for prolonged stretches.
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To take "cliffs" as the grammatical subject of "connect" is to read the passage as a meditation on nature, which forms connections that endure; to take "I" as the grammatical subject is to read the passage as a meditation on the human mind, which forms connections that must be renewed.
Academic text (2005) -
The grammatical subject "I" is separated from its verb "sing" by a two-line apposition ("chanter, them") and by the inversion of verb and direct object ("A reminiscence").
Academic text (2005)
Synonyms
57
3.2
The part of a sentence that shows who or what it is about
Surface Forms
Morphology
The phrase is a straightforward compositional combination: 'grammatical' (pertaining to grammar) modifies 'subject' (what the sentence is about), so the overall meaning is directly inferable from the parts. This modifier + noun pattern is regular and cross-linguistically common, so a B1 learner who knows both words will readily understand the term.
Etymology
Grammatical subject comes from seeing a sentence as a small stage. The subject is the main person or thing the sentence is 'about' or that 'does the action', so the verb usually matches it.