A sentence differs from a phrase by the presence of a predicative core - a grammatical basis. It consists of the main members: subject and predicate. Parsing always starts by looking for one or two main components.
Without the predicative core, which contains the meaning of the statement, the sentence cannot exist. Secondary members, if any, are always included in the subject or predicate group, that is, syntactically dependent on them.
How to isolate the grammatical basis of a sentence?
To do this, you need to decide what the subject and predicate are.
The main members are connected to each other according to the scheme: the subject and its action. In this construction, the predicate can answer verbal questions, as well as reveal a judgment about the actor - the subject (what is the subject, what is it, and so on).
In the framework of this article, we will dwell ononly on one of the main members of the proposal. The subjective meaning of the subject, on the one hand, simplifies understanding, and on the other hand, introduces some confusion. Students often put a mental equal sign between the objectivity of a given syntactic unit and the meaning of a noun. But this main term can be expressed differently.
As we know, the subject answers the questions: "Who?" or “What?”, but, nevertheless, all parts of speech, including service ones, play its role. The key to understanding what the subject is is its meaning as the subject of the action.
Basic ways of expressing the subject:
- noun;
- full forms of participles and adjectives;
- pronoun;
- numeral;
- indivisible combinations of words.
For example:
Moonlight (n.) does not warm.
Gray (adj.) ran through the forest.
Vacationers (also) were walking along the alley.
They (local) will be back tomorrow. Anyone (local) will solve this problem.
One (numeric) came back.
Grandmother and I (colloquial) will go to the dacha.
It is worth remembering that in these cases the word must be exclusively in the nominative case. If this is not the case, then we have not the subject, but a minor member of the sentence:
I (R.p., op.) was feeling sleepy (V.p., op.).
The subject can be an infinitive, as well as invariable parts of speech:
To love (indefinitely) a country means to be its patriot.
“Yesterday” (adv.) is already gone.
"Having remained silent" is a gerund.
In this case, the words lose their original grammatical meaning (additional action, circumstance, etc.) and act as a subject. The same applies to the official parts of speech:
"To" is a conjunction, and "let" is a particle.
By the way, the question of what the subject is is closely related to punctuation. If the main members of the sentence are expressed by nominal parts of speech (except for the adjective and pronoun) or infinitive, then it is necessary to put a dash between the subject and the predicate.
Examples:
Helping (undefined) others is the (n) business of my life.
Andreev (n.) – prose writer (n.).
Seven eight (num.) – forty eight (num.).
Be sure to put a dash before the word "this", as well as the particles "z nachit" and "here" before the predicate. But this rule has its own peculiarities. If there is a negation “not” between the main members, comparative conjunctions and inconsistent members of the sentence, there is no need for any punctuation mark.
So what is the subject? First, it is one of two components of the grammatical basis. Secondly, this main member of the sentence has the meaning of the subject. Thirdly, the subject can be any part of speech or combination of words.
