Talk:Subject (grammar)

Semantic subject?

I don't like this, really:

In English, verbs actually have two subjects: the semantic subject, which is the doer of the verb according to meaning, and a syntactical subject, which is what the verb agrees with, and it determines which case a pronoun gets.

In the second half of the nineteenth century, there came to be used the following terms: 1) Psychological Subject as that which is the concern of the message, 2) Grammatical Subject as that of which something is predicated and 3) Logical Subject as doer of the action (see Halliday, Towards a Functional Grammar, 2005 - page 56). So please, do not use "Semantic", because every interpretation of a clause is semantic. I guess that's what the anonymous complainer is talking about. And it is not the "doer of the verb" but the "doer of the action". Daniel Vortisto 00:41, 10 April 2007 (UTC)

In my view, while it's fine to mention the idea of "semantic subject" (as in the opening paragraphs), this confuses subject and agent/undergoer. The problem with the category of "subject" is that it is often circularly defined, or defined as a universal category (many claim Chinese has no such category), or defined disregarding the problems the concept has with ergative-absolutive languages.

The article also needs a little less emphasis on English, too (see WP:CSB).

I'd like to see if anybody has any opinions on this, before I get to the matter myself.

--Pablo D. Flores 13:51, 21 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I'm not a grammarian, so I can't comment on your first point, but about your second point--this is the English Wikipedia; I'd expect the Japanese WP to focus on the subject in Japanese. Meelar (talk) 13:53, Apr 21, 2005 (UTC)

I made a range of changes, including mention of ergative languages as requested above. I agree with Meelar that the English wiki would be written mainly for an English-speeking audience, but in the case of concepts from grammatical theory, it would not do justice to them to restrict their discussion to one language, since grammatical theory by no means is restricted to English. My inclination is that one should exemplify things with English as far as possible, but not exclusively, and certainly not exclude discussion of phenomena that don't occcur in English.--Neither 3 July 2005 17:07 (UTC)

I agree with Neither. The Subject is not a property of the English Grammar, it is a property of Natural Language (Human Adult Language). So, as far as I'm concerned, it would do much good service to the English Speaking Community - half of which having English as a second language - if we could give some examples in other languages too. It won't do you harm and it will be very helpful for the rest of the world. Daniel Vortisto 00:41, 10 April 2007 (UTC)

Introduction (Sentence 3)

Grammatical function (page was missing). Started. Please see talk:grammatical function Ken H 03:04:27, 2005-08-05 (UTC)

Error

This is wrong: "In many languages, the subject triggers agreement morphology on the verb or auxiliary of a sentence. For example, in English one uses the form has for sentences with a singular subject, and have in sentences with a plural subject. This is a morphosyntactic definition.

   She has left.
   They have left."

What about 'I have left', 'you have left'? These have singular subjects.

—The preceding unsigned comment was added by 61.106.197.20 (talk • contribs) 12:38, 24 July 2007 (UTC).

That's because in English, verbs (theoretically) agree with their subjects both in number and in person. —Ruakh_TALK 15:52, 24 July 2007 (UTC)

It doesnt matter —Preceding unsigned comment added by 198.86.16.120 (talk) 17:20, August 24, 2007 (UTC)

This error has been fixed and the part where this was said was severely modified. Still, someone else should revise it for this is a high hit article. 201.17.243.237 (talk) 06:21, 1 May 2008 (UTC)

Error - Definition of constituent

The second paragraph reads "The subject has the grammatical function in a sentence of relating its constituent (a noun phrase)".

The constituent is not always a "(noun phrase)". Consider the sentence "Driving drunk is dangerous." This sentence has no noun type. Neither does the variation, "Driving fast while drunk is very irresponsible.". In these two cases the constituents are actually verb phrases.

John Springer johnbspringer@yahoo.com —Preceding unsigned comment added by 199.64.0.252 (talk) 18:45, 29 June 2008 (UTC)

hello my nam is,BRB. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 97.95.56.45 (talk) 21:44, 14 December 2008 (UTC)