The subject of a sentence is one of the most basic concepts of
English grammar. Native English speakers have no difficulty applying
the concept when they talk. Yet if you try to get them to apply
the concept to their writing, you might as well speak in Urdu.
A tiny change in terminology and a cool grammar trick will help
your students master the concept.
Why the problem?
In English the word subject has one meaning in everyday
speech and a totally different meaning in grammar. Take this sentence:
Unlike you, I would rather hear jazz than classical music.
The
conversational subject is music. The grammatical
subject — what English teachers call the subject
of the sentence —is I.
Confusing? Sure. But students are familiar with situations in which
an English word has a specialized meaning in a specific context.
Examples:
Students can cope as long as they know the phrase subject
of a sentence has a specialized meaning in the context of
a discussion of grammar and language. Problems arise only when
students assume a term means exactly the same thing in every context.
However, you can minimize the confusion by changing your terminology
slightly.
Drop the misleading expression subject of a
sentence in favor of the more accurate term subject
of a verb.
If you want to keep tabs on students' progress in grammar, I recommend
you use informal writing. Dozen examples of informal prompts for
formative assessment of grammar and punctuation topics are included
in Shape
Learning, Reshape Teaching: An English Teacher's Guide to
Using Informal Writing with Teens and Adults.
How to see the subject of a sentence
To help students locate the subject of a sentence, English language
and linguistics scholar Rei Noguchi uses some descriptive rules
of grammar that native English speakers absorb from infancy.
1) Declarative sentence + tag line
The process is easier to show than to discuss. It begins with a
declarative sentence.
Note: this process
for finding the subject of a sentence will not work with a sentence
fragment.
The first identification procedure is to add a tag to
the original sentence, just as
Noguchi shows when he discusses tacit knowledge of pronouns and
nouns. The pronoun in the tag line of sentences tells the
person and number of the subject:
-
The pronoun he replaces singular masculine
nouns.
-
The pronoun she replaces singular feminine
nouns.
-
The pronoun they replaces plural nouns of any
gender.
The pronoun it replaces singular neuter nouns
or word groups functioning as nouns.
2) Statement into a question
The second step is to turn the original declarative sentence into
a question. That means
I am tired.
becomes
Am I tired?
If the sentence has a helping verb, it slides to the left.
If there is no helping verb, you slip some form of the verb do
into the sentence.
Examples of how the process works
In the following six sets of sentences, A is the original
sentence, B is the sentence with the tag added, and C
is the original sentence turned into a question.
Set 1
A. Cats and dogs are natural enemies.
B. Cats and dogs are natural enemies, aren't they?
C. Aren't cat and dogs natural enemies?
Set 2
A. My boss, who is normally professional and thoughtful, neglected
to mention the software upgrade.
B. My boss, who is normally professional and thoughtful, neglected
to mention the software upgrade, didn't he?
C. Didn't my boss, who is normally professional and thoughtful,
neglect to mention the software upgrade?
Set 3
A. The winners of the state elections and
the local elections will take office in January.
B. The winners of the state elections and the local elections
will take office in January, won't they?
C. Won't the winners of the state elections and the local
elections take office in January?
Set 4
A. Jack got into a fight and had three cuts on his nose.
B. Jack got into a fight and had three cuts on his nose, didn't
he?
C. Didn't Jack get into a fight and have three cuts on his
nose?
Set 5
A. Doing dusting isn't one of Bev's favorite activities.
B. Doing dusting isn't one of Bev's favorite activities, is
it?
C. Isn't doing dusting one of Bev's favorite activities?
Set 6
A. Whether Evan wants to or not, Joyce should make him do homework
before supper.
B. Whether Evan wants to or not, Joyce should make him do homework
before supper, shouldn't she?
C. Whether Evan wants to or not, shouldn't Joyce should
make him do homework before supper?
Interpreting the results
In effect, what Noguchi is suggesting is two ways of identifying
the subject of a sentence.
In each of the tag sentences (the ones labeled B), the
pronoun at the end of the sentence refers to the subject
of the verb, which is what people mean by the misleading
term subject of the sentence. From the pronoun,
you can make a good guess at the subject.
In yes-no questions, any helping verb moves to the left. (In the
sentences without a helping verb, the appropriate form of do
is used as the helping verb.) The noun or noun substitute to the
right of the moved verb is the subject of the sentence.
If results of both two sentences point to the same word or group
of words, bingo! that's the subject.
GAA
Some peculiar situations
There are times when either the tag or the yes-no question will
produce a sentence that is grammatically proper but doesn't make
logical sense to English speakers. That doesn't mean the subject-identification
strategy doesn't work.
Nagouchi explains what it really means is that usage conventions
are logical to native speakers and violations of those conventions
— even if grammatically correct — are illogical.
The strategies
for finding the subject of a sentence also point to the subject's
verb.
I initially found a copy Noguchi's Grammar and the Teaching
of Writing: Limits and Possibilities through WorldCat and
later bought my own copy. You can access the catalogs thousands
of libraries around the world through the WorldCat search box
on this site's 
