2.1 Subjects and objects
In English, the order in which we use different phrases is important. In the following example, the only way we know who is doing the asking is by looking at the word order. The words are the same, but the order of the phrases is different, and this influences the meaning of each sentence.
The journalist quoted the politician
The politician quoted the journalist
The person mentioned in the noun phrase before the verb is performing the action of ‘quoting’ while the person mentioned in the noun phrase after the verb is the one being quoted. We label these two components of the sentence the subject and the object, respectively.
We can use these two labels to explain why the famous example of a good newspaper story headline MAN BITES DOG! is a sensation, while the alternative DOG BITES MAN! won’t sell newspapers.
In both these sentences the grammatical term for the first phrase is the subject of the sentence. The subject of a sentence is the person or thing the sentence is mostly about, and if any action takes place (for example, biting!), it’s the subject who does it. In most simple English sentences the subject comes before the verb. This is true in other languages too, but not in every language. The other noun in the ‘biting’ examples is the person or animal who is affected by what the subject does (they get bitten). This is the object of the sentence.
Activity 3 Find the subject and object
Let’s see if you can identify the subjects and objects in some short sentences. Put the subjects and objects from each sentence into the table below.
- Mary and Juan ate all the pies
- The man who came to dinner brought a bottle of champagne
- John recognised the man in the orange stripy suit
- A girl called Susan Brown had answered the most questions
- Several onlookers watched the highly anticipated tennis final
- I lost my favourite pen
- The owner of the little dog from two streets over likes to play the loudest music
- The cat in the hat was fluffy
If you find this activity a little difficult, your first step should be to find the verb. Then work out what noun phrase comes before it (the subject) and what noun phrase comes after it (the object). Remember that noun phrases can be made up of several words. In order to help you, two answers have been completed for you.
| Subject | Object | |
| 1 | Mary and Juan | all the pies |
| 2 | The man who came to dinner | a bottle of champagne |
| 3 | ||
| 4 | ||
| 5 | ||
| 6 | ||
| 7 | ||
| 8 |
Comment
| Subject | Object | |
| 1 | Mary and Juan | all the pies |
| 2 | The man who came to dinner | a bottle of champagne |
| 3 | John | the man in the orange stripy suit |
| 4 | A girl called Susan Brown | the most questions |
| 5 | Several onlookers | the highly anticipated tennis final |
| 6 | I | my favourite pen |
| 7 | The owner of the little dog from two streets over | the loudest music |
| 8 | The cat in the hat | [no object] |
Some of the examples above were more difficult than others. While several sentences had very short and easy-to-spot subjects (John, I) some were a bit more complicated (The owner of the little dog from two streets over). You might also have spotted the different types of verbs used (main verbs like ate, auxiliaries like was, and some more complicated forms of verbs like likes to play).
The final example shows that not all verbs need an object. Sometimes, a person or thing just does something and the action doesn’t involve anyone or anything else:
The cat in the hat was fluffy
The sun set slowly behind the mountains
Grammar rocks!
In the second example, all the sun did was ‘set’, the rest of the sentence tells us how and where it did this, not that it did anything to anything else.