The subject is the principal part of a two-member sentence which is grammatically independent of the other parts of the sentence and on which the second principal part (the predicate) is grammatically dependent, i. e. in most cases it agrees with the subject in number and person. The subject can denote a living being, a lifeless thing or an idea. Ways of expressing the subject.The subject can be expressed by a single word or a group of words. Thus it can be expressed by:
1. A noun in the common case.
(Marcellus slowly turned his head.)
2. A pronoun — personal, demonstrative, defining, indefinite, negative, possessive, interrogative.
(Everyone was silent for a minute.)
3. A substantivized adjective or participle.
(The wounded were taken good care of.)
4.A numeral (cardinal or ordinal).
(Of course, the two were quite unable to do anything.)
5. An infinitive, an infinitive phrase or construction.
(To live is to work.)
6. A gerund, a gerundial phrase or construction.
(Lying doesn’t go well with me.)
7. Any part of speech used as a quotation.
(On is a preposition.)
8. A group of words which is one part of the sentence, i. e. a syntactically indivisible group.
(The needle and thread is lost.)
9. A quotation group.
(Perhaps this what’s-his-name will provide the cocoa)
It as the subject of the sentence
When the pronoun it is used as the subject of a sentence it may represent a living being or a thing: then it is a notional subject. Sometimes, however, it does not represent any living being or thing and performs a purely grammatical function: then it is a formal subject.
A. When it is a notional subject the pronoun it has the following meanings:
1. It stands for a definite thing or some abstract idea — the personal it.
(If this is a liberty, it isn’t going to mean a thing.)
2. It points out some person or thing expressed by a predicative noun, or it refers to the thought contained in a preceding statement, thus having a demonstrative meaning — the demonstrative it.
(It is John.)
Sometimes the pronoun it is a formal subject, i, e. it does not represent any person or thing.
Here we must distinguish:
1. The impersonal it is used:
(a) to denote natural phenomena (such as the state of the weather, etc.) or that which characterizes the environment. In such sentences the predicate is either a simple one, expressed by a verb denoting the state, of the weather, or a compound nominal one, with an adjective as predicative.
(It often rains in autumn.)
(b) to denote time and distance.
(It is five minutes past six.)
2. The introductory or anticipatory it introduces the real subject.
(It was curious to observe that child.)
3. The emphatic it is used for emphasis.
(It was Winifred who went up to him.)
