Sentence Subjects
What can be the subject of a sentence? A noun:
A pronoun:
Words like
everyone, everybody, everything, something, anybody, nothing, no one
Quantifiers with nouns/pronouns |
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
“Dummy” subjects
Be careful In most cases, the words before the verb are the subject of the sentence.
Prepositional phrases cannot be subjects, even if they come at the beginning of a sentence.
Some words look plural but are actually singular:
Mass or “group” nouns may be singular or plural, depending on focus.
With
either/neither…or/nor, the subject
closest to the verb determines agreement.
Some can sometimes be used to indicate an unidentified person.
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.