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Office, E.E. Grammatical Subject. Encyclopedia. Available online: https://encyclopedia.pub/entry/60902 (accessed on 23 October 2026).
Office EE. Grammatical Subject. Encyclopedia. Available at: https://encyclopedia.pub/entry/60902. Accessed October 23, 2026.
Office, Encyclopedia Editorial. "Grammatical Subject" Encyclopedia, https://encyclopedia.pub/entry/60902 (accessed October 23, 2026).
Office, E.E. (2026, October 13). Grammatical Subject. In Encyclopedia. https://encyclopedia.pub/entry/60902
Office, Encyclopedia Editorial. "Grammatical Subject." Encyclopedia. Web. 13 October, 2026.

Grammatical Subject

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[1]A grammatical subject is a syntactic constituent that occupi10.1017/CBO9780511619427.003es the subject position in a clause and is structurally related to the predicate through grammatical relations such as agreement, case marking, or positional properties [2]. In linguistic analysis, the subject is identified as a clause-level element whose grammatical behavior is determined by the syntactic system of a language rather than solely by semantic notions such as agency or topic [2]. The grammatical subject is distinct from related concepts such as the semantic agent, which refers to the participant performing an action, and the discourse topic, which refers to the entity a speaker presents as the main focus of information.

syntax grammatical relations subject–predicate structure clause structure
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References

  1. Avery D. Andrews. The major functions of the noun phrase; Cambridge University Press (CUP): Cambridge, United Kingdom, 2007; pp. 132-223. [CrossRef]
  2. Keenan, Edward L. 1976. “Towards a Universal Definition of ‘Subject’.” In Subject and Topic, edited by Charles N. Li, 303–333. Academic Press. https://www.linguindic.com/data/browse/references/114/
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Subjects: Language & Linguistics
Contributor MDPI registered users' name will be linked to their SciProfiles pages. To register with us, please refer to https://encyclopedia.pub/register : Encyclopedia Editorial Office
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Entry Collection: Language and Linguistics
Revisions: 3 times (View History)
Update Date: 22 Oct 2026
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