A Student's Introduction to English Grammar

68 Chapter 4 Clause structure, complements and adjuncts

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

As explained in Ch. 3, § 1.1, all verbs other than the modal auxiliaries agree with the

subject in the present tense, while be also shows agreement in the preterite:

[9] i a. Sue loves the children.

ii a. Sue was fo nd of the children.

b. The children love Sue.
b. The children were fo nd of Sue.
This property of determining the form of the verb is another key property of the sub­
ject. The inflectional form of the doubly underlined verbs shows that Sue (3rd per­
son singular) is subject ofthe [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 fo rms, for example, where the modal auxiliary must is invariable, can be
changed to Kim has signed both fo rms, 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:

[10] i a. Does Sue love the children?

ii a. Wa s Sue fo nd of the children?

b. Do the children love Sue?

b. We re the children fo nd of 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 (see Ch. 3, §3.1). In either case, the subject ends up in the

distinctive post-auxiliary position.

2.2 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 def­
initions of the subject that suffer from the shortcomings we discussed in Ch. 1, §3.
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.