Sentence Subjects
What can be the subject of a sentence?
A noun:
| Jonathan loves chocolates. |
| Mrs. Smith lives next door to the barber shop. |
| The yellow dog makes me nervous. |
| Crocodiles are very dangerous |
A pronoun.
| It isn’t time yet. |
| They went to sleep at 9:00. |
| Are you coming to the dance? |
Words like everyone, everybody, everything, something, anybody, nothing, no one.
| Everything is ready. |
| Is everyone here? |
| Is anybody home? |
| Quantifiers with nouns/pronouns | Quantifiers without nouns/pronouns |
| Some of the pie was gone. | Some (count) are here. Some (non-count) is not. |
| Some of the pies were gone. | All is well. All are watching. |
| Both of them are in the foyer. | Both are correct. (as a group) |
| Neither of them is in the foyer. | Neither is correct. (separately) |
| None of those people are nice. | (all of them are not nice) |
| None of those people is my friend. | (not any individual) |
| Noun clauses |
| Whoever left the food on the table is in trouble. |
| What you say is not important. |
| How you do it is up to you. |
| “Dummy” subjects |
| There are five people in the room. |
| There is some milk in the refrigerator. |
Be careful
In most cases, the words before the verb are the subject of the sentence.
| It is just the three of us. |
| The three of us are going to be there. |
Prepositional phrases cannot be subjects, even if they come at the beginning of a sentence.
On the table was a red hat,On the table were a red hat, white gloves and a blue scarf.
Some words look plural but are actually singular:
| Physics is my favorite subject. |
| The news was good. |
| Scotch and soda is my favorite drink. (This is very uncommon usage.) |
| My faithful friend and companion is Terry. |
Mass or “group” nouns may be singular or plural, depending on focus.
| The family is more important than the individual. |
| The family are going in separate directions. |
With either/neither…or/nor, the subject closest to the verb determines agreement.
| Neither John nor Jane was the winner. |
| Either the men or the women are going to take the cake. |
| Neither Mr. Jones nor his sons have a car. |
| Neither the boys nor their father has a car. |
Some can sometimes be used to indicate an unidentified person.
| Some woman was here to see you. |
| Some guy keeps calling you. |
Relative clauses do not affect the main subject-verb relationship; however, S-V agreement within the relative clause may be different, depending on the meaning.
| The people who live there are my friends. |
| The house that the Jacksons built need to be remodeled. |
| One of the men who live there is deranged. He is the only one who lives there. |
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