Page 17 - New Grammar with a Smile 7

2. A subject can be a phrase containing a noun, articles or modifiers. For example,

y All the students in the class were making noise.
y That new boy in the class is very intelligent.
3. A subject can be two or more nouns, pronouns or noun phrases that may be joined
by conjunctions such as and, not only…but also, both…and, neither…nor,
either…or. For example,

y Chocolate and pista kulfi are my two favourite flavours of ice cream.
y Both the players and the officials were honoured for their performance.

When a sentence has two or more subjects, we call the subject
a compound subject.

Subjects in Different Sentence Structures

In a sentence

1. the subject performs the action. For example,

y Rohit wrote a letter.
y The puppy chewed up the sock.
2. the subject is described. For example,

y The kitten is naughty.
y Pavan is intelligent.
3. the subject is acted upon. For example,

y The victim was taken to the hospital.
y She was attacked by a bear.

Spotting the Subject

To identify the subject in a sentence, we should identify the verb. Once the verb is
identified, we should ask the question ‘who’ or ‘what’ is doing the action or ‘who’ or
‘what’ we are speaking about.
Let us learn to identify the subjects in different kinds of sentences.

1. Declarative Sentences

In declarative sentences, the subject usually appears before the verb.
For example,
y The puppy bit the postman’s ankle.
y The horse jumped over the fence.

17