# Does every sentence have a subject?



## karuna

Split from here. 


cheshire said:


> 1.У мня ести маси*а*. (I have a car.)
> 2.У мня *нет* ести масин*ы*. (I have no cars.)
> 
> There's something going, why does a negative existential sentence require the genitive? It serves making the subject concrete.


 
Are these examples in Russian? If so they should be corrected:
У меня есть машина.
У меня нет машины.

But I doubt that the genitive subject is more definite than nominative. Latvian has the same structure:
_Man ir mašīna. _= I have a car.
I (dative) is (3rd pers., present, sing.) a car (nominative).
_Man *nav* mašīna*s *_= I have no car.
I (dative) not (3rd pers., present, sing., negative) a car (genitive).

It is debatable whether the last sentence has a grammatical subject at all because the subject should be in the nominative case. But even if for the sake of argument we accept that _mašīnas _is the subject in this sentence it still is as much indefinite as _mašīna _in the sentence with the positive verb. But of course, there are no articles and the distinction between definite and indefinite nouns is very fuzzy.


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## Whodunit

karuna said:


> It is debatable whether the last sentence has a grammatical subject at all because the subject should be in the nominative case.


 
Every sentence - except for ellipses - has a subject, in every language. 

In your case, I think that "nav" is the subject _and_ the predicate. It's the same as the Spanish expression "te amo" where you can't see a real subject. The subject is the -_o_ in am*o*.

Having said this, I must ask your a question: What is the infinitive of the verb "nav?" (Sorry, I have no idea of Latvian ). Is it always used with the genitive? I understand your sentence as "To me is none of the cars) where "cars" is the singular in Latvian, right? Maybe it means something like "To me is no part of car." I'm just trying to convey the idea of forming a negative Latvian sentence with the copula (to be) into English.


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## Outsider

Whodunit said:


> Every sentence - except for ellipses - has a subject, in every language.


Ouch!


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## karuna

Whodunit said:


> Every sentence - except for ellipses - has a subject, in every language.



The attempts to analyse sentences in terms of subject-verb existance has its limits with certain sentences in Latvian. See http://www.vvk.lv/index.php?sadala=152&id=347 From the summary below: _However, neither the grammatical, nor the semantic subjects are obligatory components of the sentence in Latvian._



> In your case, I think that "nav" is the subject _and_ the predicate. It's the same as the Spanish expression "te amo" where you can't see a real subject. The subject is the -_o_ in am*o*.


It is different from the predicate *nav *which would be _viņš *nav* skolēns _(He *is not *a pupil.) And an elliptical subject is also often encountered in Latvian like in Spanish (Nezin*u* – _ I don't know_). But this case is different. Even at the primary school we are taught to recognise such sentences with one main sentence word. Examples would be as follows:

_1) Salst. _Literally "It is cold" or "It freezes" but meaning is closer to "I am cold". Let's expand it.
_2) Man salst. = To me (dative) freezes (I am cold). _Dative construction again with the same meaning as above. Maybe _man (_to me) is the dative subject?
_3) Man salst kājas. = To me freeze legs (My legs are freezing). _Here we have a real subject _kājas _and the verb _salst._ So, it is not logical that _man _in one instance is the subject and in another it is not.



> Having said this, I must ask your a question: What is the infinitive of the verb "nav?"


It is the verb "*nebūt*" (not to be) and it is always used with the genitive unless it is part of the predicate (see above). Some other verbs are used with the genitive as well like "pietikt" (to be enough), "trūkt" (to lack) but they are rare.



> (Sorry, I have no idea of Latvian ). Is it always used with the genitive? I understand your sentence as "To me is none of the cars) where "cars" is the singular in Latvian, right? Maybe it means something like "To me is no part of car." I'm just trying to convey the idea of forming a negative Latvian sentence with the copula (to be) into English.


Maybe it can be explained like that:

_Man = for me
nav = does not exist the possession
mašīnas = of a car
_


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## Outsider

Whodunit said:


> It's the same as the Spanish expression "te amo" where you can't see a real subject. The subject is the -_o_ in am*o*.


That's arguable. I would say the subject is "yo". The "-o" suffix is a personal desinence.


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## Whodunit

Outsider said:


> Ouch!


 
Interesting answer. 

Can you show me an example of a language with a complete sentence (i.e. no ellipsis) that contains _no_ subject? 



karuna said:


> The attempts to analyse sentences in terms of subject-verb existance has its limits with certain sentences in Latvian. See http://www.vvk.lv/index.php?sadala=152&id=347 From the summary below: _However, neither the grammatical, nor the semantic subjects are obligatory components of the sentence in Latvian._


 
I have tried to read thr English summary, but I'm not sure whether or not I should disagree. My gut feeling tells me that a sentence is incomplete without either a subject or a predicate. Even the Arabic "u7ibbuki" (أحبك), meaing "I love you," is a sentence. The subject is in the verb, it is the declined form. The predicate is the same 'word' as the subject, but it has another function. You can use a 'real' subject (putting "ana" before), but it's not necessary.

In other languages, like English or Swedish, the pronoun is obligatory, because you wouldn't understand "have" or "needed" without the pronoun, would you? 



> _1) Salst. _Literally "It is cold" or "It freezes" but meaning is closer to "I am cold". Let's expand it.


 
That's a sentence. The pronoun could be the -t (as you know, I don't know Latvian grammar) attached to the verb. The subject is therefore _in_ the predicate, a feature that is not typical of English and other Germanic languages.



> _2) Man salst. = To me (dative) freezes (I am cold). _Dative construction again with the same meaning as above. Maybe _man (_to me) is the dative subject?


 
We use the same construction in German: "Mir ist kalt" (= To me is cold). The subject is "ist" in this sentence, the (dative) object "mir" and "kalt" is the obligatory addition to "sein" (be), because it is a copula.



> _3) Man salst kājas. = To me freeze legs (My legs are freezing). _Here we have a real subject _kājas _and the verb _salst._ So, it is not logical that _man _in one instance is the subject and in another it is not.


 
Yes, _kājas_ is the subject if it matches the verb _salst_. Do they agree in grammatical number?



> It is the verb "*nebūt*" (not to be) and it is always used with the genitive unless it is part of the predicate (see above). Some other verbs are used with the genitive as well like "pietikt" (to be enough), "trūkt" (to lack) but they are rare.


 
They are so-called copulas requiring an obligatory addition, because "he is not" is not complete. It may be possible that Latvian requires the genitives for such verbs. In Arabic, kaana (to be) and laysa (not to be) require the accusative case.



Outsider said:


> That's arguable. I would say the subject is "yo". The "-o" suffix is a personal desinence.


 
And how do you know that the subject is "yo" if it isn't there? I'm sorry that I can't come up with an example in Spanish, but in French, _je suis_ can either mean _I am_ or _I follow_. _Tu suis_ means _you follow_. Now let's suppose you would read _suis_ without a personal pronoun, what would be the subject? _Tu_ or _je_? 

If the same is possible in Spanish, you couldn't say that "yo" is the subject, because "tú" could be it, too. However, you could say that the subject is in the verb, and that's all. 



vince said:


> The car is the grammatical subject, it becomes clearer with sentences in the past tense:


 
Regardless your examples, I don't agree that "car" is the subject, because the subject has to be in the nominative case by definition. There are languages (like Latin, Arabic, and Ancient Greek), in which some sentence constructions are translated as nominal phrases, but whose "subject" in semantic sense is in the accusative.


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## Outsider

Whodunit said:


> Can you show me an example of a language with a complete sentence (i.e. no ellipsis) that contains _no_ subject?


I thought I had. 



Whodunit said:


> And how do you know that the subject is "yo" if it isn't there?


The desinence gives you information about the subject, but the actual subject is "yo". Or are you saying that "Yo te amo" has _two_ subjects, "yo" and "-o"?



Whodunit said:


> I'm sorry that I can't come up with an example in Spanish, but in French, _je suis_ can either mean _I am_ or _I follow_. _Tu suis_ means _you follow_. Now let's suppose you would read _suis_ without a personal pronoun, what would be the subject? _Tu_ or _je_?
> 
> If the same is possible in Spanish, you couldn't say that "yo" is the subject, because "tú" could be it, too. However, you could say that the subject is in the verb, and that's all.


Isn't that like saying that "suis" can't be a verb, because looking only at it you can't tell whether it means "I am" or "I follow"?


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## Whodunit

Outsider said:


> I thought I had.


 
I must have missed that. Can you direct me to your example?



> The desinence gives you information about the subject, but the actual subject is "yo". Or are you saying that "Yo te amo" has _two_ subjects, "yo" and "-o"?


 
No, it still has one subject. This is my thesis you should try to disprove: Every sentence has one subject, not more, not less, conjunctional clauses (linked by _and_, _although_, _as if_ ...) excluded, of course.



> Isn't that like saying that "suis" can't be a verb, because looking only at it you can't tell whether it means "I am" or "I follow"?


 
"Suis" is definitely a verb, it is even a predicate in an appropriate sentence, but the subject would be "in" this verb, if it was used colloquially, for instance: "Suis chez toi d'main" (Will be with you tomorrow). That's all I was trying to say. 

Of course, you could also say that the inflected verb indicates the subject, but I would argue that the subject is in the sentence (somewhere, like a ghost, but it's there). From my point of view I don't see a sentence complete until there are subject and predicate in it.


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## Vanda

Whodunit:


> Can you show me an example of a language with a complete sentence (i.e. no ellipsis) that contains _no_ subject?


 

I can.  Portuguese:
1- Chove. (only the verb to rain and a complete sentence, no subject)
2- Choveu muito ontem. (To rain in the past and another complete sentence, no subject)


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## Outsider

Whodunit said:


> I must have missed that. Can you direct me to your example?


"Ouch!" is a non-elliptic sentence without any subject.



Whodunit said:


> No, it still has one subject. This is my thesis you should try to disprove: Every sentence has one subject, not more, not less, conjunctional clauses (linked by _and_, _although_, _as if_ ...) excluded, of course.


I was disproving your _other thesis_, that the "-o" desinence in Spanish "Te amo" is a subject. 



Whodunit said:


> Isn't that like saying that "suis" can't be a verb, because looking only at it you can't tell whether it means "I am" or "I follow"?
> 
> 
> 
> 
> "Suis" is definitely a verb, it is even a predicate in an appropriate sentence, but the subject would be "in" this verb, if it was used colloquially, for instance: "Suis chez toi d'main" (Will be with you tomorrow). That's all I was trying to say.
> 
> Of course, you could also say that the inflected verb indicates the subject, but I would argue that the subject is in the sentence (somewhere, like a ghost, but it's there). From my point of view I don't see a sentence complete until there are subject and predicate in it.
Click to expand...

While it's not the most common situation, I think sentences without subjects -- truly without subjects, not like the Spanish example you gave -- are all around us. For example, "Yes" and "No" are have no subject (they don't even have a verb!) Can you think of more common sentences than these?


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## modus.irrealis

Like Vanda, I was going to ask about weather words like rain too, but specifically in those language where you can drop subject pronouns even though the verb doesn't inflect to show the subject, like Mandarin (or Japanese, I think). I just looked this up so I don't know if it's correct, but would 下雨了 xiàyŭ le (it is raining?) be a complete sentence with no indication at all of any subject, semantic or grammatical?

(And just to add, I've read some analyses where an English sentence like "there are two people here" has two grammatical subjects since "there" and "people" split the usual properties of a subject between them.)


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## Whodunit

Vanda said:


> I can.  Portuguese:
> 1- Chove. (only the verb to rain and a complete sentence, no subject)
> 2- Choveu muito ontem. (To rain in the past and another complete sentence, no subject)


 
Hm, I think the subject is implied, but it is not really written. The subject is implied by the inflection of the verb, even though it is not there. Languages that can drop the pronoun can form sentences with only one word. Germanic languages, however, can't be complete - I would say - in only one word. It is impossible in German.



Outsider said:


> "Ouch!" is a non-elliptic sentence without any subject.
> 
> I was disproving your _other thesis_, that the "-o" desinence in Spanish "Te amo" is a subject.


 
Here I must disagree.  Interjections, particles alone, and ellipses are no sentences. Of course, you were just kidding me, because I only mentioned the word "ellipsis," but I thought you would be so clever to understand interjections as a "non-sentence." 



> While it's not the most common situation, I think sentences without subjects -- truly without subjects, not like the Spanish example you gave -- are all around us. For example, "Yes" and "No" are have no subject (they don't even have a verb!) Can you think of more common sentences than these?


 
A: Is he at home?
B: Yes.

That's a rather colloquial conversation, because standard English requires a _complete_ sentence as an answer:

A: Is he at home?
B: Yes, he is.

The same is true in many languages, I think, but most people don't pay attention to such a "non-existing" rule.



modus.irrealis said:


> I just looked this up so I don't know if it's correct, but would 下雨了 xiàyŭ le (it is raining?) be a complete sentence with no indication at all of any subject, semantic or grammatical?


 
It is a sentence, because the subject is semantically implied in the verb. There's still a subject in the sentence I think. Although I don't understand the meaning of 下, I think the subject is somewhere in 雨. It would be interesting to hear opinions about this from speakers of Chinese and Japanese, how they learned to analyze such sentence in school etc. 



> (And just to add, I've read some analyses where an English sentence like "there are two people here" has two grammatical subjects since "there" and "people" split the usual properties of a subject between them.)


 
That's a strange exception like the formal French question construction "Tes vacances étaient-elles bonnes?"


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## Outsider

So basically, Whodunit, you just throw away any sentence that doesn't have a subject, and _then_ say that all sentences have a subject?...


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## Frank06

Hi,


Whodunit said:


> Hm, I think the subject is implied, but it is not really written. The subject is implied by the inflection of the verb, even though it is not there. Languages that can drop the pronoun can form sentences with only one word. Germanic languages, however, can't be complete - I would say - in only one word. It is impossible in German.


Then what about imperatives? It's not German, but Dutch "Zit!" is a fairly clear sentence of one word (verb), without a subject. And I don't see an implied subject...

Groetjes,

Frank


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## Whodunit

Outsider said:


> So basically, Whodunit, you just throw away any sentence that doesn't have a subject, and _then_ say that all sentences have a subject?...


 
Did I? I said that it has a subject. It may not be written, but the sentence has a subject. A German sentence is not a complete sentence without a written subject (Entschuldigung! Hallo! Tut mir Leid.), because we need it written (and spoken, too), not only implied, as in many Romance, Semitic, Slavic, and Asian languages.

This reminds me of something: Imperative sentence do not have a written subject in most languages. In German, we use the imperative subject for the second singular/plural formal (Machen Sie es!), I don't know if this is possible in other languages, too. However, I would say that "Mach es" (Do it!) is a sentence with a subject, too. Here the subject is implied, but it is clear that it is the second singular informal.

You might now think that I'm contradicting myself, but this is not the case. All I wanted to show you is that the subject is omnipresent in every sentence (ellipses, interjections and the like are no sentences), but may not be really written. In Spanish, the "o" in "te amo" tells me that the subject is "yo." It is indirectly written, i.e. kind of implied, but not spelled out.


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## Frank06

Whodunit said:


> You might now think that I'm contradicting myself, but this is not the case. All I wanted to show you is that the subject is omnipresent in every sentence (ellipses, interjections and the like are no sentences), but may not be really written. In Spanish, the "o" in "te amo" tells me that the subject is "yo." It is indirectly written, i.e. kind of implied, but not spelled out.


 
不是。
I find it weird that written language is your starting point.
I also find your definition of 'omnipresent' very weird, it's quite similar to your (implied) definition of 'ellipsis': namely present/absent ad hoc.

Groetjes,

Frank


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## karuna

Whodunit said:


> That's a sentence. The pronoun could be the -t (as you know, I don't know Latvian grammar) attached to the verb. The subject is therefore _in_ the predicate, a feature that is not typical of English and other Germanic languages.



_(1) Salst _is indicative mood, simple present, 3rd person, singular of the verb _salt _(to suffer from cold). It is a complete and grammatically correct sentence by itself describing an ongoing action. 

We can add a subject too, for example, (2) _Salst deguns. _(Suffers from cold, the nose) The verb form is the same therefore we cannot say that _salst _includes the subject. But can we find the implied pronoun in the first sentence, as we could with _te amo? _Since it is the 3rd person, it would need the 3rd person pronoun. In Latvian we have only _tas _(it, that) or _viņš/viņa _(he, she). But we get nonsense because this sentence requires the dative construction. (3) _Viņam/tev/man salst (To him/you/me, suffers from cold). _Therefore some linguists assert that it is a special case of the dative subject. I think it is too-far fetched, because we compared the sentences (3) and (4) _Man __salst __deguns__. _(To me, suffers from cold, the nose). At least it is not the subject in the grammatical sense.



> We use the same construction in German: "Mir ist kalt" (= To me is cold). The subject is "ist" in this sentence, the (dative) object "mir" and "kalt" is the obligatory addition to "sein" (be), because it is a copula.


I don't know German but in Latvian the similar construction with the predicate would be _Man ir auksti _(Me is cold). But the above _Salst _is not a predicate construction.



> Yes, _kājas_ is the subject if it matches the verb _salst_. Do they agree in grammatical number?


They do, it just happens that the verb endings in singular and plural for simple tenses are the same in the 3rd person.

I think it would be intersting for you to read the Latvian article because the author challenges the position of linguists who asserts, as you say, that the subject is omnipresent in every sentence (of course, meaning complete logical sentences, not ellipses, interjections etc.).


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## Flaminius

modus.irrealis said:


> 下雨了 xiàyŭ le (it is raining?) be a complete sentence with no indication at all of any subject, semantic or grammatical?


下雨了 (It is raining) is a subjectless sentence wherein 下雨 as a whole is the verb.  *Frank*'s 不是 (It is not so) is a subjectless sentence too.

*Whodunit*, if you want to see a real gem of subjectless sentences, refer to Japanese.
marason-wa tsukareru
marathon-TOPIC becomeFatigued (intransitive)
Marathon makes you tired.

Since _tsukareru_ is an intransitive verb, _marason_ cannot be the agent that fatigues "you."  Also note that the sentence never means, "Marathon (a person's name?) gets tired."  In a rather formalistic approach, _marason _here can be interpreted as (grit your teeth) the object of an adjunct clause (bold indicates the visible part of the sentence).
If one does *marathon, *one *gets tired.*


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## I_like_my_TV

Yes, 下雨了 is a complete sentence, without a subject.

In fact, many English sentences starting with "It" may be indeed subjectless sentences in some other languages:

It rains
It's cold
It's possible
etc.

We need "It" for these sentences simply because English grammar requires it, and not because it's necessary for all sentences to have a subject (although it's possible to force a subject onto any sentence, as is proved in English.)

By the way, I read in an earlier post that "Yes" and "No" are sentences. This is not correct.


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## Qcumber

Tagalog (Philippines) has subjectless sentences.
e.g. 
1) Umúulán ná. = It's raining.
2) Magandá, dî bá? = It's beautiful, isn't it?
3) Mahál na mahál. = It's very expensive.


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## cheshire

This may be a stupid question, but is it really true that a subject must always be in the nominative case, not the genitive, etc.?

I always thought that 雨 was the subject of 下雨了.

It may be good for a change to leave the discussion of subject aside, and open a related thread from the viewpoint of "new/old information" as you often see in discourse analysis.

下雨了　下　is old information. 雨 is new.
雨下了 　雨 is old information. 下 is new.

Jo soy pianista. "Jo" and "soy" are old info. Therefore, "Jo" can be omitted.
Qui est pianista? -Jo. "jo" is new info, so you can't omit it.


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## Outsider

cheshire said:


> This may be a stupid question, but is it really true that a subject must always be in the nominative case, not the genitive, etc.?


That's basically the very definition of the nominative case.

I cannot discuss your Chinese example in detail, as I do not speak the language, but I know that Chinese is an analytic language, so it's probably inadequate to speak of cases in it.



cheshire said:


> *Y*o soy pianista. "*Y*o" and "soy" are old info. Therefore, "*Y*o" can be omitted.
> *¿*Qui*én* es*t* pianista? -*Y*o. "*y*o" is new info, so you can't omit it.


I don't quite understand what you mean by "old information"...


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## Hakro

I_like_my_TV said:


> In fact, many English sentences starting with "It" may be indeed subjectless sentences in some other languages:
> 
> It rains
> It's cold
> It's possible
> etc.


Finnish is one of those languages. Using subject "it" in these sentences is considered a very bad mistake (often made by Finns whose mother tongue is Swedish).


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## jonquiliser

Exactly. Germanic language speakers perhaps tend to see some sort of subject as always implied, because Germanic languages (as far as I know at least, most of them do) grammatically require an implied subject in most sentences (not interjections etc, obviously). It is questionable, anyway, in what way these "subjects" are _subjects_; in Swedish at least they are called (I believe) "impersonal" or "formal" (depending on the particular construction) subjects, as they have no "real" content. They are just _grammatical_ structures. ->

_Det_ regnar (It rains). 
_Det finns _ massor med mat (There's a lot of food).


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## karuna

It is interesting to note that most languages are so-called null subject languages that can omit the subject (apart from contextually dropping it) as in _te amo _in Spanish. These examples do not count as subjectless because the empty subject category is still somehow reflected in the sentence, usually through verb conjugation.

English as a non-null subject language requires a dummy pronoun as subject even if subject is not semantically present. (It rains.) But as we can see, impersonal verbs can stand alone in many other languages and even cannot accept the explicit subject. In other words, in such sentences the subject is omitted non-existent dummy pronoun.


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## Lugubert

cheshire said:


> I always thought that 雨 was the subject of 下雨了.


I think that 'snow' is (a part of) the verb, necessarily/conventionally qualified by the particle 'down'.



> 下雨了　下　is old information. 雨 is new.
> 雨下了 　雨 is old information. 下 is new.


How do you argue for 'down' being old or new information??


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## Whodunit

karuna said:


> _(1) Salst _is indicative mood, simple present, 3rd person, singular of the verb _salt _(to suffer from cold). It is a complete and grammatically correct sentence by itself describing an ongoing action.


 
Okay, I must admit that I didn't understand the use of the ver _salt_. Sorry about the confusion. 



> I don't know German but in Latvian the similar construction with the predicate would be _Man ir auksti _(Me is cold). But the above _Salst _is not a predicate construction.


 
Well, in German you can use some verbs without a subject (mich friert/mich ärgert/mir ist kalt). However, they are either colloquial, dialectal, or require a subordinate clause:

Mich friert. (colloquial and dialectal for 'Mir ist kalt' and 'Es friert mich') = I'm cold.
Mich ärgert (es), dass du ... = I'm angry that ...
Mich ärgert es. = I'm angry about that.



> They do, it just happens that the verb endings in singular and plural for simple tenses are the same in the 3rd person.


 
Hm, that's unfortunate for this discussion, but do you think that _kājas_ and _salst_ belong together, I mean that _salst_ is the predicate to _kājas_? In which case is _kājas_?



> I think it would be intersting for you to read the Latvian article because the author challenges the position of linguists who asserts, as you say, that the subject is omnipresent in every sentence (of course, meaning complete logical sentences, not ellipses, interjections etc.).


 
Yes, but I won't get the chance to learn Latvian within the next week so well so that I will be able to understand the text. 



Flaminius said:


> *Whodunit*, if you want to see a real gem of subjectless sentences, refer to Japanese.
> marason-wa tsukareru
> marathon-TOPIC becomeFatigued (intransitive)
> Marathon makes you tired.


 
To me マラソンは is the subject, because I think we could compare the particle は to the nominative marker in western terminology. The topic or subject of the sentence could be "marathon" and the verb means "to make someone tired." I totally understand the understand but I don't see why you don't regard マラソン as the subject here.



I_like_my_TV said:


> By the way, I read in an earlier post that "Yes" and "No" are sentences. This is not correct.


 
Definitely true!



Qcumber said:


> Tagalog (Philippines) has subjectless sentences.
> e.g.
> 1) Umúulán ná. = It's raining.
> 2) Magandá, dî bá? = It's beautiful, isn't it?
> 3) Mahál na mahál. = It's very expensive.


 
Fine, and how did you learn to analyze such sentences in school? I'm not sure if you're a native speaker of Tagalog, but if so, you should be able to determine the subject of the sentence. Or could you simply tell your teacher that this sentence lacks a subject? It would be kind of funny in German to say that; maybe because we have to use a subject in every sentence.


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## Whodunit

cheshire said:


> This may be a stupid question, but is it really true that a subject must always be in the nominative case, not the genitive, etc.?


 
That's how I understand the word _nominative_. Every word that is used in the nominative case is the subject of the clause.



> I always thought that 雨 was the subject of 下雨了.


 
I thought that 下雨 was an adjective, so that the sentence means "(it's) being rainy at the moment" where "it is" is implied.



Hakro said:


> Finnish is one of those languages. Using subject "it" in these sentences is considered a very bad mistake (often made by Finns whose mother tongue is Swedish).


 
So, would you tell someone who's learning Finnish that he should not a _subject_ in sentences like "It is possible" in Finnish?



jonquiliser said:


> Exactly. Germanic language speakers perhaps tend to see some sort of subject as always implied, because Germanic languages (as far as I know at least, most of them do) grammatically require an implied subject in most sentences (not interjections etc, obviously).


 
Yes, that might be my problem why I see a subject in every sentence, even if it is not written. 



> It is questionable, anyway, in what way these "subjects" are _subjects_; in Swedish at least they are called (I believe) "impersonal" or "formal" (depending on the particular construction) subjects, as they have no "real" content. They are just _grammatical_ structures.


 
They are present in German, and we call them impersonal pronouns:

Es regnet. (It's raining)
Es gibt viele Menschen, die ... (There are many people who ...)



karuna said:


> It is interesting to note that most languages are so-called null subject languages that can omit the subject (apart from contextually dropping it) as in _te amo _in Spanish. These examples do not count as subjectless because the empty subject category is still somehow reflected in the sentence, usually through verb conjugation.


 
The link is great. The Japanese sentence (私たちは買い物おした。跡でご飯お食べた) makes me think of something: The second is subjectless and quite natural in everyday Japanese, because we know that we are talking about us, but I still think that you need to know about which person we speak. In the example sentence, we knows this from 私たち, but if you came to your mother, how should she know that you wanted to talk about 私たち or 私? In Spanish and most other null subject languages, we know this by the ending, that's why I argued that "te amo" is a sentence with a subject and predicate in one word. In Japanese, 愛してる(よ) could be said by everyone, not only by _me_. Doesn't it mean "He loves you" or "We love you all," too? You need the context in Japense.

That's why I would agree that Japanese and Chinese sentence can be subjectless, because they can use the infinitive in a sentence and one knows what the person is talking about. I've learned through this thread that you can say "rainging" in Chinese and it's clear what the person wants to say. In Spanish, Portuguese etc., however, you have to conjugate the verb; saying "llover" wouldn't make much sense, would it? 



Lugubert said:


> I think that 'snow' is (a part of) the verb, necessarily/conventionally qualified by the particle 'down'.


 
In my opinion, 雨 means _rain_. Snow would be 雪, woudn't it?


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## DrWatson

Whodunit said:


> So, would you tell someone who's learning Finnish that he should not a _subject_ in sentences like "It is possible" in Finnish?


I don't think that's the same kind of sentence. "It is possible" would translate to *Se on mahdollista.* (*Se *=it; *on* =is; *mahdollista *=possible. *Se* is the subject, *on* is the predicate and *mahdollista* is the predicative). Although, subject can be normally omitted but not in the 3rd person.

You can picture the difference with a dialog. If someone says "It's possible", you can ask him "What is possible?". But when someone says "It rains", you really can't ask him "What rains?". Sky, perhaps?

And another thing, in Finnish there are subjectless indefinite verb constructions, usually called "4th person". Like *Täällä syödään* (lit. Here is being eaten). There's no subject to be omitted and you can't put any subject there. Am I on the right track here, Finnish speakers?


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## cheshire

As shown by Karuna, and was failed to be reflected in the related Wiki article, there are lots of examples of subject-less sentence patterns in Russian. And you know, in many Asian languages.

Even Chinese and Japanese are largely influenced by Western languages not just in the vocabulary level, but in syntax. If my memory is correct, 的 and 地 weren't distinguished until Western influence became critical and abundunt. As a result, 的 came to be used only for adjectives, 地 for adverbs. (I'm sorry if it is wrong again!)

I guess the need for a subject in most sentences was affected by the sperior Western culture. People came to think that a sentence without a subject is ambiguous, and that one reason for their inferiority in culture lied also in their language. 

Therefore you see more subject-less sentences more frequently in novels than in academic journals.


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## Flaminius

Whodunit said:


> To me マラソンは is the subject, because I think we could compare the particle は to the nominative marker in western terminology. The topic or subject of the sentence could be "marathon" and the verb means "to make someone tired." I totally understand the understand but I don't see why you don't regard マラソン as the subject here.


No, マラソン is not the subject.  Look at the verb _tsukareru_.  As I noted in my previous post, this is an intransitive verb.  If it were the subject, the sentence would mean "Marathon gets tired," which is not the case here.


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## Whodunit

Flaminius said:


> No, マラソン is not the subject. Look at the verb _tsukareru_. As I noted in my previous post, this is an intransitive verb. If it were the subject, the sentence would mean "Marathon gets tired," which is not the case here.


 
Well, ok. I seem to understand the use of は in Japanese. I've always tried to translate it as if it was the nominative marker. However, が would not not work instead of は in your sentence, would it?


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## karuna

Whodunit said:


> That's how I understand the word _nominative_. Every word that is used in the nominative case is the subject of the clause.



I agree that the subject should in the nominative case or nominalized if it is not the noun. Some linguists speak about special cases of the dative and genitive subjects but it complicates things more than it explains.

But not all words in the nominative case are subjects in the sentence. In the most simple example with copula, "A is B", where both words A and B are nouns in the nominative case, one word is the subject and the other is the part of the predicate.


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## Flaminius

Whodunit said:


> Well, ok. I seem to understand the use of は in Japanese. I've always tried to translate it as if it was the nominative marker. However, が would not not work instead of は in your sentence, would it?


It would, provided that the whole sentence is subsumed as a subordinate clause;
マラソンが疲れることは誰でも知っている
Everyone knows that marathon is tiresome.

Sorry for the confusion but I admit that more is unknown about Japanese syntax than is known.


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## I_like_my_TV

Whodunit said:
			
		

> However, が would not not work instead of は in your sentence, would it?


It would, but the nature of the sentence will have changed. 
Anyway, if you push hard enough (and knowing what you're doing  ), マラソン can be made to (appear to) be the subject, as I already said in my earlier post: 





> it's possible to force a subject onto any sentence


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## modus.irrealis

Flaminius said:


> 下雨了 (It is raining) is a subjectless sentence wherein 下雨 as a whole is the verb.  *Frank*'s 不是 (It is not so) is a subjectless sentence too.



Thanks -- and just to add, the dictionary I looked it up in called the whole 下雨 a verb, so that supports what you say.



cheshire said:


> This may be a stupid question, but is it really true that a subject must always be in the nominative case, not the genitive, etc.?



There are http://[Bergative languages, which use two different cases for the subject, as defined in terms of languages that have nominative and accusative cases (so I guess it depends on how you define subject).



> It may be good for a change to leave the discussion of subject aside, and open a related thread from the viewpoint of "new/old information" as you often see in discourse analysis.


That (as well as the other posts) reminds me of what I've read about Mandarin, that one of the biggest differences with English is that sentences are organized (logically) in terms of topic-comment instead of subject-predicate.



karuna said:


> It is interesting to note that most languages are so-called null subject languages that can omit the subject (apart from contextually dropping it) as in _te amo _in Spanish. These examples do not count as subjectless because the empty subject category is still somehow reflected in the sentence, usually through verb conjugation.



I've never understood why languages like Spanish and Mandarin are grouped together in opposition to English (in this area), because it seems to me that Spanish and English are similar in that they always have to have some indication of the subject whereas languages like Mandarin don't, and that seems to be just as significant as the similarity between Spanish and Mandarin that you don't always have to have a separate word for the subject.


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## Alijsh

karuna said:


> Are these examples in Russian? If so they should be corrected:
> У меня есть машина.
> У меня нет машины.
> 
> But I doubt that the genitive subject is more definite than nominative. Latvian has the same structure:
> _Man ir mašīna. _= I have a car.
> I (dative) is (3rd pers., present, sing.) a car (nominative).
> _Man *nav* mašīna*s *_= I have no car.
> I (dative) not (3rd pers., present, sing., negative) a car (genitive).
> 
> It is debatable whether the last sentence has a grammatical subject at all because the subject should be in the nominative case. But even if for the sake of argument we accept that _mašīnas _is the subject in this sentence it still is as much indefinite as _mašīna _in the sentence with the positive verb. But of course, there are no articles and the distinction between definite and indefinite nouns is very fuzzy.


As far as I know, Russian just like Persian doesn't have article so let me participate in discussion:

In Persian unmodified nouns are definite and sometimes generic.
*У меня есть машина - man mâšin dâram* (Literally: I have car)

But if you want to count it i.e. to say I have one car and not two or more cars then yek (one, a, an) is added: man yek mâšin dâram

*У меня нет машины - man hich mâšin-i nadâram* (I have no car)

Here mâsin has taken the enclitic -i which marks nouns for indefinite or specific. Here it's specific because we have used hich (no-> specific). I don't know Russian grammar, but perhaps for specific, the noun is modified and that's why we have *машины*.

By the way, I should remind that definite vs. indefinite differs from specific vs. non-specific (generic)

- Hope this is related to your discussion and sorry beforehand if it isn't.


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## coconutpalm

cheshire said:


> Even Chinese and Japanese are largely influenced by Western languages not just in the vocabulary level, but in syntax. If my memory is correct, 的 and 地 weren't distinguished until Western influence became critical and abundunt. As a result, 的 came to be used only for adjectives, 地 for adverbs. (I'm sorry if it is wrong again!)
> 
> I guess the need for a subject in most sentences was affected by the sperior Western culture. People came to think that a sentence without a subject is ambiguous, and that one reason for their inferiority in culture lied also in their language.
> 
> Therefore you see more subject-less sentences more frequently in novels than in academic journals.


 
That's true.

As for your example of 下雨了,I think there is no subject, though I'm not sure--- i'm not a linguist. And we don't say 雨下了. We say 雨下完/透了.下雨了can both mean present or past.


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## Lugubert

I'm sorry that I mixed up rain and snow. That's easy this time of the year in Sweden.


coconutpalm said:


> As for your example of 下雨了,I think there is no subject, though I'm not sure--- i'm not a linguist.


I'm not a _professional_ linguist either, but I agree.


> 下雨了can both mean present or past.


Would it be possible to interpret it as "It just started to rain", be it right now or in talking about yesterday?


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## jazyk

> There are ergative languages, which use two different cases for the subject, as defined in terms of languages that have nominative and accusative cases (so I guess it depends on how you define subject).


Basque is among them. 
Nominative: Ni euskalduna naiz. - I am Basque (ni = I, euskalduna = Basque, naiz = am).
Ergative: Nik liburua daukat. - I have a book (nik = I, liburua = (the/a) book, daukat = have).

Jazyk


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## cheshire

Is "k" the ergative marker?


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## jazyk

Yes, it is, Cheshire, but it can also be the plural marker.

Nere amak etxea dauka. = My mother has a house.
Nere amak etxeak dauzka. = My mother has (a few) houses.

Jazyk


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## coconutpalm

Lugubert said:


> Would it be possible to interpret it as "It just started to rain", be it right now or in talking about yesterday?



Exactly. 
But I would probably add 昨天 before 下雨了 if I'm talking about yesterday.
e.g.  You look at the outside and say "下雨了", meaning it's raining.


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## MarX

Hi!

In Indonesian it is normal to have a conversation without subjects, even though the verbs don't change according to person, number, tenses, etc. as in many European languages.

Salam,


MarX


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