From: Carl W. Conrad (cwconrad@artsci.wustl.edu)
Date: Tue Dec 23 1997 - 11:57:07 EST
At 10:25 AM -0600 12/23/97, Jonathan Robie wrote:
>Here is a statement I made in one of my lessons:
>
>"When a noun is a subject, it appears in the nominative, and agrees with
>the verb in person and number, just as pronouns do."
>
>That isn't quite right, since nouns do not have person. If you replace a
>noun with a pronoun, though, the pronoun does have person, and the verb
>would agree with the person of that pronoun.
>
>Is there a better way to say this?
How's about: "The subject of a finite verb, whether a noun or a pronoun, is
nominative and agrees with the verb in number, except that neuter plural
subjects are frequently, although not always, used with singular verbs."
My reason for making this "FINITE verb" is, of course, that an infinitive
may have a nominative or accusative subject, depending on whether that
subject is identical with or different from the subject of the verb of the
clause introducing the infinitive phrase.
Carl W. Conrad
Department of Classics/Washington University
One Brookings Drive/St. Louis, MO, USA 63130/(314) 935-4018
Home: 7222 Colgate Ave./St. Louis, MO 63130/(314) 726-5649
cwconrad@artsci.wustl.edu OR cconrad@yancey.main.nc.us
WWW: http://www.artsci.wustl.edu/~cwconrad/
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.4 : Sat Apr 20 2002 - 15:38:42 EDT