Уро́к 3
3.3 Grammar: The Subject
Люби́мая Грамма́тика
I. What is it?
In grammatical terms, what is a subject?
If you can answer this question, great! This next part will be easy. If not, read on and make sure that you CAN answer this question after watching and reading the following. If not, please follow up.
First, let’s start with a more general question:
What’s a sentence?
You were probably taught that a sentence expresses a complete thought. In grammatical terms, there is at least a subject and a predicate.
Now then…
What’s a subject?
You may have also been told that the subject is what the sentence is about. In grammatical terms, the subject is the person or thing with which the (conjugated) verb ‘agrees’. For active expressions, the subject is the person or thing that ‘does’ the action of the verb.
For example:
Mary loves John.
- ‘Mary’ is the subject in this sentence. We know this because ‘Mary’ and the verb agree. This means that the verb is conjugated to agree with ‘Mary’. We know intuitively that ‘Mary’ is the one who is doing the ‘loving’, and not ‘John’ in this case. We actually don’t know how ‘John’ feels at all. ‘John’ is the object of Mary’s affection, or the object of the verb ‘love’ in this case. ‘John’ is the recipient of ‘love’.
- ‘Mary’ is also the first noun in the sentence, a position very often reserved for the subject (but not always). We can get away with assuming the first noun is the subject in English because we tend to assume a subject-verb-object word order when we speak and write. That is, just the ordering of the words is usually enough to tell English speakers what or who is doing what.
Hear this now. In Russian, you canNOT assume this kind of fixed word order, so you need to know all this about subjects and object right now!
II. Examples
Next, let’s look at some simple examples in both Russian and English. The following are SIMPLE SENTENCES. The Russian words are either from your vocabulary or they are proper nouns (names). You should be able to read all examples in Russian.
Read the Russian sentences and note the English translations below them.
Елена – студентка.
Yelena is a student.
Антон – инженер.
Anton is an engineer.
Вера – профессор.
Vera is a professor.
Папа – бизнесмен.
Dad is a businessman.
Question:
What different about the two languages when you compare one to the other?
Answer:
The Russian sentences are missing ‘am’ / ‘is’ / ‘are’. The present tense verb ‘to be’ is not used in Russian. You just don’t say it, and this generally taken as good news!
So, if I want to say, “Heather is an American,” in Russian I just say:
Хе́зер – америка́нка.
III. Subjects & Objects
Finally, let’s look at some more complex English sentences. The subjects are in RED (adjectives or modifying words of the subject are not highlighted here – only the actual subject word itself). Objects, if there are any, are in BLUE.
READ all and ask yourself if you agree that the words in RED are the subjects of the sentences.. If you have any questions or disagreements, please voice them!
- Mom looks tired.
- My dog ran away from home.
- I gave my last bite of chocolate to my best friend.
- Mary and John are getting married.
- After work tomorrow we are flying out to Boston.
- Just between you and me, Jason has been really lazy lately.
- What did she say? (Compare to: She said what?)
- Who called you last night?
- Who did you invite to the party? (Compare to: You invited who to the party?)
- My dad’s former roommate told us that Dad used to love to go skiing in the dark.
- Everyone thinks that she has gone to Irkutsk to live on Lake Baikal for a year.
*Note – a sentence may have multiple clauses. Each clause has a subject.
