26) The Principal Parts of the Sentence

In a sentence we distinguish the principal parts, the secondary parts and the independent elements. The principal parts of the sentence are the subject and the predicate.

The subject

The subject is the principal part of a two-member sentence which is grammatically independent of the other parts of the sentence and on which the second principal part (the predicate) is dependent. The subject denotes a living being, a thing or an idea. It can be expressed by:

1. a noun (N) in the common case

• The waiter brought my tea.

Occasionally a N in the possessive case is used as the subject:

• Ada’s is a noble heart.

2. a pronoun – personal, demonstrative, defining, indefinite, negative, possessive, interrogative.

• Everyone was silent for a minute.

• Who tore this book?

The subject is often expressed by the indefinite pronoun one or the personal pronouns they, you, we, which refer not to any particular person or thing but to people in general:

• Life is beastly short. One wants to live forever./….Хочется жить вечно.

• They say he’s clever./Говорят, ….

3. A substantivized adjective or participle:

• The wounded were taken good care of.

4. a numeral (cardinal or ordinal):

• The two were quite unable to do anything.

5. an infinitive, an infinitive phrase or construction;

• To live is to work.

6. a gerund, a gerundial phrase or construction:

• Lying doesn’t go well with me.

7. Any part of speech used as quotation:

• On is a preposition.

8. a group of words which is one part of the sentence:

• The needle and thread is lost.

When it is a notional subject the pronoun it has the following meanings:

1. The personal it - It stands for a definite thing or some abstract idea

• The door opened. It was opened by a little girl.

2. the demonstrative it - It points out some person or thing expressed by a predicate, or it refers to the thought contained in the preceding statement

• It is John.

• It was a large room with a great window.

As a formal subject it has the following meanings:

1. the impersonal it is used –

1. to denote natural phenomenon (state of weather, etc.) or that which characterizes the environment:

• It is cold in winter.

The state of weather can be also expressed by meant of there is construction. In such sentences the N introduced by there is is the subject:

• There was a heavy frost last night.

2. to denote time and distance:

• it is 5 minutes past 6.

• It is along way from the station.

2. the introductory/anticipatory it introduces the real subject:

• It’s no use disguising facts.

3. The emphatic it is used for emphasis:

• It was he who won the race.

26А) The subject. Means of expressing the subject.

The subject is the independent member of a two-member predication, containing the person component of predicativity. The subject is generally defined as a word or a group of words denoting the thing we speak about. The subject of a simple sentence can be a word, a syntactical word-morpheme or a complex. As a word it can belong to different parts of speech, but it is mostly a noun or a pronoun. A word used as a subject combines the lexical meaning with the structural meaning of “person”. So it is at the same time the structural and the notional subject. We may speak of a secondary subject within a complex. The syntactical word-morphemes there and it may also function as secondary subjects (It being cold, we put on our coats. I knew of there being no one to help them). The analysis of sentences like He was seen to enter the house, is a point at issue. Traditionally the infinitive is said to form part of the complex subject (He…to enter). Ilyish maintains that though satisfactory from the logical point of view, this interpretation seems to be artificial grammatically, this splitting of the subject being alien to English. He suggests that only HE should be treated as a subject, whereas was sees to enter represents a peculiar type of compound predicate. Some grammarians (Smirnitsky, Ganshina) speak of definite-personal, indefinite-personal, impersonal sentences, but it is a semantical classification of subjects, not sentences. If we compare the subject in English with that of Russian we shall find a considerable difference between them. In Russian the subject is characterized by a distinct morphological feature – the nominative case, in English it is indicated by the position it occupies in the sentence. In Russian the subject is much less obligatory as a part of the sentence than in English. In English the subject may be a syntactical word-morpheme, a gerund, or a complex, which is alien to Russian.