The subject

1. Distinctive syntactic properties of the subject in English

The subject is sharply distinguished from other elements in clause structure by the
combination of a number of syntactic properties. The following survey covers four
particularly important ones.

(a) Basic position before the verb

The basic position of the subject - the position it occupies in canonical clauses - is before
the V (and the whole VP). This is the most obvious feature that distinguishes the subject
from the object in English:

[6] a. Sue loved Max. b. Max loved Sue.

Only the conventional English order of elements tells us that Sue is subject in [a], while
Max is subject in [b] - and thus that in [a] we are talking about Sue's feelings, and in [b]
we are talking about Max's. There are non-canonical constructions where the subject does
not occur in this position but, overall, location before the verb is the major overt property
that picks out the subject.

(b) Case

For just a handful of NPs, there is an inflectional distinction of case that separates subjects
from most non-subjects. The NPs concerned are mainly those consisting of the pronouns
listed in [7] .

NOMINATIVE I he she we they

ACCUSATIVE me him her us them

As subjects of finite clauses, these pronouns have to appear in the nominative case- form,
while in object function they appear in the accusative case-form:

[8] a. She loved him. b. He loved her.

She and he are marked as subjects by having nominative form, while accusative him and
her are objects.

With NPs that don't themselves have a contrast between nominative and accusative forms, we can
generally use the case property indirectly by asking which form is required when we substitute
one of the pronouns in [7] . In The dogs barked at the visitors, for example, the dogs could be
replaced by nominative they and the visitors by accusative them. This shows that the subject is
the dogs, not the visitors.

(c) Verb agreement

All verbs other than the modal auxiliaries agree with the subject in the present tense, while be also
shows agreement in the preterit:

[9] i a. Sue loves the children. b. The children love Sue.

ii a. Sue was fond of the children. b. The children were fond of Sue.

This property of determining the form of the verb is another key property of the subject. The
inflectional form of the doubly underlined verbs shows that Sue (3rd per- son singular) is subject
of the [a] examples, while the children (3rd person plural) is subject of the [b] ones.
In clauses where the verb does not show agreement, we can again use the test indirectly by
changing to a construction where the verb does agree. Kim must sign both forms, for example,
where the modal auxiliary must is invariable, can be changed to Kim has signed both forms, where
has agrees with the subject Kim.

(d) Subject-auxiliary inversion

In a number of constructions, including most kinds of interrogatives, the subject appears after
rather than before the verb, which has to be an auxiliary. This enables us to confirm that Sue is
subject of the [a] examples in [9], and the children is subject of the [b] ones. We just compare
these clauses with their interrogative counterparts:
i a. Does Sue love the children? b. Do the children love Sue?
ii.a. Was Sue fond of the children? b. Were the children fond the Sue?
In [ii] we have simply inverted the subject and the auxiliary verb be, whereas in [i], where
the declarative contains no auxiliary verb, we have inserted do and this is inverted with the
subject. In either case, the subject ends up in the distinctive post-auxiliary position.

2. Traditional errors in defining the subject

There are two semantic observations that can be made about subjects. They are sound
enough in themselves, but they have been used as the basis for definitions of the subject that suffer
from the shortcomings. The two observations are these:
In canonical clauses that describe an action, the subject of the clause normally corresponds
semantically to the performer of the action. For example, when we say Oswald assassinated
Kennedy, the subject is Oswald, and the person it refers to (Lee Harvey Oswald) is the actor,
the alleged performer of the assassination.
 The subject NP commonly (but by no means invariably) identifies a topic for the clause,
i.e. what the clause is primarily about, and the predicate makes some sort of comment
about that topic. For example, Paris is lovely in the spring has Paris as the subject, and
it is likely to be interpreted as saying something about Paris; Spring is a great time to
visit Paris has spring as the subject, and it is likely to be interpreted as saying something
about spring.

Many definitions of the subject given in grammars and dictionaries represent a massive
overgeneralization of the first point: the subject is simply defined as the performer of
the action expressed in the verb. Less commonly, it is defined as the topic of the
sentence, the part that identifies what the sentence is about - a similarly massive over-
generalization of the second point. There is something in both of these that is relevant
to a definition of the subject at the general level: many languages have a function in the
clause that is often associated with the semantic role of actor or with the topic and that
shows other signs of primary syntactic importance in the clause (though some languages
seem to be organized rather differently). But the correlation in English between subject
and actor or topic is far too complex for the above definitions to work at the language-
particular level. Let us examine the two definitions in turn.

(a) Subject and actor

The old-fashioned definition of the subject as the performer of the action expressed in the
verb works well enough with a sentence like We wandered down the street; but it fails
completely with examples like those in [ 1 1 ] :

[1 1] i She knows him well.

ii Ernie suffered a heart attack.
iii My mother was attacked by the neighbor’s dog.

She is the subject of [i], but knowing isn't an action. Notice that [i] can't be used in
answer to a do question (such as what does she do?), so nothing in [i] talks about
anyone performing an action. If we took the old-fashioned definition seriously we
would have to say that there is no subject here. But she has all four of the syntactic
properties that are the relevant ones for English: it's before the verb, it's in
nominative case, the verb agrees with it, and it follows the auxiliary in the
corresponding interrogative (Does she know him well?).
In [ii] we do have a description of an event (rather than a state, as in [iD,
but that still doesn't mean there is a performer of an action. Suffering isn't an action
 that Ernie performed on the heart attack. Again, then, the referent of the syntactic
subject doesn't have the semantic role of actor.
Example [iii] does describe an action, but it's a passive clause (the
corresponding active clause would be the neighbor’s dog attacked my mother), and
the actor role is associated not with the subject, my mother, but with the
complement of the preposition by, namely the NP the neighbor’s dog.

So the subject of an English clause certainly cannot be identified on the basis of semantic
role: it can be associated with a range of roles, depending on the kind of situation described
and whether the clause is active or passive.

(b) Subject and topic

In Paris is lovely in the spring it is natural to take the subject as expressing the topic, and in Spring
is a great time to visit Paris we would be inclined to say that spring is the topic; but it is easy to
find examples where it would be completely implausible to take the subject to be a topic:
[ 1 2] i Something is wrong with this disk drive.
ii In space, nobody can hear you scream. I
iii It’s s time these kids were in bed.

In [i], the subject NP is something, but it would be nonsensical to suggest that something tells
us what the topic is. The topic is obviously the disk drive, and the comment is that it has a fault.

In [ii], the topic is obviously not expressed by the subject nobody. The clause is about what it's
like in the airless void of space, and if any phrase identifies that topic it's the preposed adjunct
in space.

And in [iii], the subject it is a dummy pronoun with no identifiable meaning. It can't possibly
pick out a topic. In fact this kind of main clause isn't properly described in terms of a distinction
between a topic and a comment at all. Not all clauses have topic phrases.

English does not indicate the topic of a clause by any grammatical marker (though some
languages do), and it certainly does not always make topics subjects. There is very often no clear-
cut single answer to the question of what the topic of a clause is: it will depend very much on the
context.

In English, then, there is nothing like a one-to-one relation either between subject and actor or
between subject and topic. The lesson is that, at the language-particular level, we cannot define
the syntactic term 'subject' in terms of the partially correlated semantic concepts 'performer of the
action' or 'topic of the clause’.