Routledge Dictionary of Language and Linguistics
Main syntactic function in nominative languages, such as English, which is marked morphologically, positionally, and structurally depending on the specific language. The most common morphological marker is the nominative case. On other possibilities, see Keenan (1976) and Sridhar (1979). The subject can be marked positionally by initial, unmarked word order. In the constituent structure of a sentence, the subject is immediately dominated by the S-node in contrast to the object, which is immediately dominated by the verb or predicate phrase.
The subject constituent plays a prominent role in the sentence in so far as it is less likely than an object constituent to be affected by language-specific restrictions (
hierarchy universal). Thus the verb usually agrees only with the subject in most languages, which is also the most preferred antecedent for pronouns ( reflexive pronoun). The specific semantic role of the subject is that of the agent of an action; the subject can take on very different roles, especially in the passive voice, e.g. This information was kept secret by the government until now. In such cases, where the formal and semantic criteria for the subject do not concur, a distinction is made between the grammatical (i.e. syntactic) subject (this information) and the logical subject, which is also termed the underlying subject (by the government). In reference to pragmatics and communicative aspects, the subject is usually the theme (that which is known) of the sentence, while the predicate is usually the rheme (that which is new) ( theme vs rheme).
References
Andrews, A. 1985. The major functions of the noun phrase. In T.Shopen (ed.), Language and typology and syntactic description, vol. 1: Clause structure. Cambridge. 64–154.
Faarlund, J.T. 1988. A typology of subjects. In M.T. Hammond, E.A.Moravcsik, and J.W.Wirth (eds), Studies in syntactic typology. Amsterdam. 193–208.
Fillmore, C.J. 1968.
The case for case. In E.Bach and R.T.Harms (eds), Universals in linguistic theory. New York. 1–88.
Foley, W. and R.D.van Valin. 1977. On the viability of the notion of ‘subject’ in universal grammar. BLS 3.293–320.
Hasan, R. and P.H.Fries (ed.) 1995. On subject and theme: a discourse functional perspective. Amsterdam and Philadelphia.
Johnson, D.E. 1977. On Keenan’s definition of ‘subject of.’ LingI 9.673–92.
Keenan, E.L. 1976. Towards a universal definition of ‘subject.’ In C.N. Li (ed.), Subject and topic. New York. 303–34.
Sridhar, S.N. 1979. Dative subjects and the notion of subjects. Lingua 49.99–125.
Van Oosten, J. 1977. Subjects and agenthood in English. CLS 13.459–71.
Zaenen, A. (ed.) 1982. Subjects and other subjects. Bloomington, IN.
syntactic function, relational grammar
This is the complete article, containing 418 words
(approx. 1 page at 300 words per page).
View More Summaries on Subject
