What is a subject?

1. The subject is the noun or pronoun (person or thing) doing the action of the verb.

2.i) A noun is often defined as a word which names a person, place or thing. Here are some examples of nouns: boy, river, friend, Mexico, triangle, day, school, truth, university, idea, Siti Nurhaliza, movie, aunt, vacation, eye, dream, flag, teacher, class, grammar. Siti Nurhaliza is a noun because it is the name of a person; Kuala Lumpur is a noun because it is the name of a place; and boy is a noun because it is the name of a thing.

ii) Some grammar books divide nouns into 2 groups - proper nouns and common nouns. Proper nouns are nouns which begin with a capital letter because it is the name of a specific or particular person place or thing.
Some examples of proper nouns are: Kuala Lumpur, Siti Nurhaliza, Atlantic Ocean, February, Monday, Malacca, Ahmad, Petaling Street, Pizza Hut.
If you see a word beginning with a capital letter in in the middle of a sentence, it is probably a proper noun.
Most nouns are common nouns and do not begin with a capital letter.

iii) Many nouns have a special plural form if there is more than one. For example, we say one book but two books. Plurals are usually formed by adding an -s (books) or -es (boxes) but some plurals are formed in different ways (child - children, person - people, mouse - mice,
sheep –sheep).

3. i) A pronoun is often defined as a word which can be used instead of a noun. For example, instead of saying Ahmad is a student, the pronoun he can be used in place of the noun Ahmad and the sentence becomes He is a student. We use pronouns very often, especially so that we do not have to keep on repeating a noun.

ii) A personal pronoun often refers to a person. Like nouns, personal pronouns sometimes have singular and plural forms (I-we, he-they).

iii)Unlike nouns, personal pronouns sometimes have different forms for masculine/male, feminine/female and neuter (he-she-it). Also unlike nouns, personal pronouns have different forms depending on if they act as subjects or objects (he-him, she-her).

A subject is a word which does an action and usually comes before the verb, and an object is a word that receives an action and usually comes after the verb.

For example, in the sentence Yesterday Ida called her mother, Ida is the subject and mother is the object. The pronoun she can be used instead of Ida and the pronoun her can be used instead of mother.

The form of a personal pronoun also changes according to what person is referred to. Person is used here as a grammar word and means:

1st person or the self (I, me, we), =>me is only being an object in a sentence NEVER a subject

2nd person or the person spoken to (you),

3rd person or the person spoken about (he, she, him, her, they, them). =>him, her, them are object pronouns.

Example sentence: Pronoun as the subject in a sentence.

a) I love cycling and mountain climbing.
b) We are leaving for London.
c) You drive me crazy.
d) He called me last night.
e) She broke the window glass.
f) They were garbage collectors.