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Chapter 1 Subjects
Subjects are words that tell who or what is doing or being something are subjects.
Subjects in sentences are words that come in the form of nouns & pronouns.
Nouns:
A word that names a person, place, thing, idea, or activity.
Proper Nouns:
A word that is capitalized and is a specific name of a place, a person, or a thing.
Common Nouns:
A word that is not capitalized and are ordinary and universal names that are assigned to thing, people, or places.
Abstract Nouns:
A word that names things that cannot be tasted, see, touched, heard, or smelled, but are felt as an emotion or believed
in philosophy.
 Freedom, love, trust, faith.
Collective nouns:
Nouns that name groups of people, things, or ideas as single entities.
 Group, army, jury, society, department.
Pronouns:
Names a person or thing doing or being something.
Subject Pronoun:
A pronoun that identifies and names the specific person or thing doing or being something.
 I, you, he, she, it, we, they, who.
Indefinite Pronoun:
A pronoun that does not refer to any specific person or thing, so it is vague and “not definite”.
 anybody, each, either, nothing, someone, neither, everybody, none, each.
Simple and Compound Subjects:
Simple subjects contain only one noun or pronoun, compound subjects contain more than one noun or pronoun.
Subject in Imperative Sentences:
The name given to a sentence that issues a command.
 The subject is whoever is receiving the command.
Subjects as Distinct from Prepositional Phrases:
Phrases that begin with a preposition (pg. 18) and end with a noun or pronoun. They do not contain the subject of a
sentence.
 Into the room walked Mother. → remove prepositional phrase: → Into the room walked Mother.
 Identify noun → Mother.
Subjects in Declarative Sentences with Here and There:
Here and there cannot be subjects and are prepositions that shown location. When a sentence begins with here or
there flip the sentence around.
 Here is my book. → change it to: → My book is here. → Book is a noun; therefore, it is the subject.
Subjects in Interrogative Sentences:
Sentences that ask questions and end with a question mark. To identify the subject in these sentences, answer the
question with a full statement.
 Where is my laptop? → Answer: My laptop is on the table. → Who or what is on the table? → Laptop, which is a
noun and the subject of the sentence.
Gerunds:
Words that are verbs but function as nouns and have an “-ing” ending.
Infinitives:
The infinitive verb is the simplest base form of the verb.
 Gossip spreads quickly at our office. → “Gossip” functions as noun and subject.
Subjects with Gerunds and Infinitives as Subject:
The “to” infinitive is base form of the verb preceded by the word “to”.
 To graduate from TCTC is my dream. → Who or what is my dream? → To graduate, which is an infinitive
functioning as noun and is the subject of the sentence.