Basic Clause PatternsHowever, as a general characterization of the subject, it will not do. We saw
in our chapter on Major Parts of Speech that not all verbs denote actions.
For example, be, belong, become, seem, ache, know, and own denote states.
How then can we use the definition to identify the subjects in (20)?
(20) a. That sculpture belongs to the Art Institute.
b. Egworm seems moody today.
c. My sinuses ache.
d. Who owns the earth?
The situation is even more complex than this, because even verbs that
do denote actions may have subjects that do not denote the doer of that ac-
tion (assuming that a doer is a person or at least an animate entity that does
something):
(21) a. The keys opened the door.
b. Fred received a letter from the IRS.
c. The storm knocked out the power lines.
d. The heavy oaken door opened silently.
In this section, we define a set of terms developed by linguists to describe
the semantic roles of subjects, as well as of objects and other phrases in
clauses. Consider the sentences:
(22) a. John broke the windshield.
b. John approached Mary.
John is the subject of both sentences in (22), and in traditional grammar
would have been defined as the “doer” of the actions of breaking the wind-
shield or approaching Mary. Glossing the subject in this way is an attempt
to provide a general statement of the semantic relation between the subject
and the verb in an indefinite number of sentences. Modern linguists have
attempted to give a more precise characterization of this relationship. They
would say that John is the Agent of these two sentences. Agent is defined as
the animate instigator of the action denoted by a verb.
The term Agent contrasts with other terms in a set of semantic roles that
may be assigned to subjects and other grammatical relations. Compare the
sentences of (22) with the sentences of (23):
(23) a. The hail broke the windshield.