subject

«subject» in Mova's school dictionary: Something you learn at school, such as maths, English or… — its meaning for a pupil, its sense in the lessons and examples, with 5 sentences of Mova's corpora that use it.

part of speech

noun (a subject, subjects); verb (subject, subjects, subjected, subjecting — subject to); adjective (subject to)

meaning for a pupil

1) Something you learn at school, such as maths, English or science. tree →

2) What something is about: "the subject of the story" or the topic of a talk. tree →

3) In grammar, the subject is the person or thing that does the action of the verb: in "The dog barks", "the dog" is the subject. tree →

4) A person ruled by a king or queen. tree →

5) "Subject to" means likely to be affected by, or depending on: "subject to change". tree →

sense in the lessons

In school, subjects are the different lessons on the timetable. In grammar lessons, every sentence has a subject and a verb, and the verb must agree with the subject. In art, the subject of a painting is what it shows. In emails, the subject line tells what the message is about. Phrases: favourite subject, change the subject, subject line, subject and verb, subject to change.

examples

• My favourite subject is art. tree →
• Let's change the subject. tree →
• In "Tom kicked the ball", Tom is the subject. tree →
• The subject of the poem is the sea. tree →
• The king spoke to his subjects. tree →
• Write a clear subject line in your email. tree →
• Times are subject to change because of the weather. tree →
• There dwell the Sea King and his subjects. tree →

note

Noun stress: SUB-ject; verb stress: sub-JECT ("They were subjected to rain"). Countable: one subject, two subjects. Grammar trap: the verb agrees with the subject: "The dogs bark", "The dog barks". The subject is not always the first word: "Yesterday, my sister won." — "my sister" is the subject.

In the corpora

• Alice asks what happens when they get back to the start, and the March Hare quickly changes the subject.
• The Mole, who knows it's bad manners to talk about trouble ahead, changes the subject.
• In a command, the subject «you» is understood, so «Stop.» is a complete sentence.
• After a fronted adverbial, the rest must still be a complete sentence with its own subject and verb.
• The relative pronoun can often be left out when it is not the subject of the clause: «the book I read».

Trees and pragmatics

Every meaning and example of «subject» parsed by Mova, each sentence with its dependency tree and frames.