Delahunty and Garvey
There would be universal agreement that the subjects of the clauses in (9) are
the pronouns, I, you, etc. From these simple clauses we can derive a general
pattern, namely that an English subject typically occurs more or less immedi-
ately before the verb of its clause.
Exercise
Using only the fact that an English subject occurs more or less imme-
diately before the verb(s) of its clause, identify the whole subject of
each of the following sentences:
a. Oscar made most of the children laugh most of the time.
b. Many deer are killed on the roads each year.
c. It is raining.
d. In spite of his stature, Tom Thumb ran for election to high office.
e. As for TV bloopers, they should be left on the cutting room floor.
f. Bill, with great skill and daring, quickly extricated himself from
the web of intrigue.
g. Rarely have I been so disgusted.
h. There are a number of rhetorical problems here.
What problems did you run into, and how did you solve them?
From our discussion of pronouns in our chapter on Minor Parts of
Speech, we hope you remember that pronouns, if they replace anything,
replace entire noun phrases. It follows that if we replace the pronouns in (9)
with more complex NPs, then those more complex NPs (bolded) must also
be the subjects of their clauses.
(10) a. Olive is at home.
b. Olive and Popeye are at home.
c. The one you’re looking for is at home.
d. All the little children are at home.
Many school grammars, writing manuals, and composition textbooks
identify the head of the subject phrase as the subject of the clause. Some
texts are more careful and distinguish the simple subject from the whole
subject. By simple subject they mean the head of the subject phrase. Logi-
cally, however, if a pronoun is the subject of a clause, then any expression,
regardless of how complex, that replaces the pronoun must also be the sub-