ABSTRACT
This reading takes us into some new areas: grammatical theory (how do we go about describing grammar, what are the possibilities?), the history of grammatical description, and so on. However, its main aim is to discuss the ambiguity of the word ‘subject’. There is a popular interpretation of this word as well as a terminological, grammatical, one. Compare
What is the subject of this paragraph?
What is the subject of this verb?
The two possibilities come together inWhat is the subject of this sentence?
254 But Halliday goes further than this, identifying three possible meanings that are relevant to language description.