ABSTRACT
Functions like subject and object are what constituents do. The fact that the subject comes first in the sentence is also typical of English. The participants expressed by the subjects involve an array of different roles, none of them that of agent. They include: patient, instrument, location, experiencer and recipient. Verbs agree only with subjects, and hence people can say that the subject is that element with which the verb agrees. The basic position of the subject is sentence-initially, before the predicate, as in all the examples just given. A grammatical feature of Modern English is the now obligatory expression of the subject. Whereas in earlier times subjectless sentences were perfectly acceptable, the history of English has seen the evolution of structural subjects. The predicate can have further internal structure; it obligatorily consists of one string of verbs and can consist of one or two other grammatical functions in addition.
