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welcome to this presentation in which we're going to discuss finding the simple subject in our textbook this material is organized in a little bit of an unexpected way let me go to the fourth edition so we can see that we're going to go to let's see about page 19 that's the page number for the third edition and we can see it's on page 21 if you have Edition 4 and if you have Edition 3 its page 19 so if you haven't already located your book please put me on pause and find it so we can work together through the book all right so let's begin I also have kind of a summary some notes about this topic and as I said this is kind of an odd location for this material because it's really belongs in my opinion in the subject verb agreement portion of the textbook but it is organized technically in the noun pronoun agreement section and so that's where I'm going to cover it but just so you'll know you're not crazy if this doesn't seem like it's the best fit ok so we're going to talk about how we find the simple subject in the sentence but before we do that let's talk about sentences a little bit so I'm going to do a little bit of a preview Simmons's have two parts they have a complete subject which is typically first and then they will have also a complete predicate and this is the usual order it doesn't have to be in this order you can have the complete predicate first but for English that's pretty unusual so let's just look at a sentence Susan ate her breakfast okay well we know that our subject is Susan so I'm going to put the subject in yellow in this case our complete subject is just one word everything that isn't part of the subject is going to be the predicate the predicate includes the verb the direct object the indirect object to the adverbs all that good stuff but let's imagine that we had a more complete subject we're going to talk about how you identify these items in a second but I'm just kind of introducing concepts right now okay the gruff policeman gave the young driver a ticket well our complete subject would be the gruff policeman and our complete predicate would be gave the young driver a ticket you don't need to know this next fact in order to be successful on this topic but you need to know it for other reasons I'm going to go ahead and give it away here we're about to talk about the differences between the complete subject and the simple subject but I'm not going you dependently don't need to be able to identify the simple predicate just like there's a simple subject there's a simple predicate and the simple predicate is just the verb so I'm going to put that in baby-blue simple predicate is part of the complete predicate so have to be within it and it would include the whole verb in this case we have a very simple verb and we also have a very simple of our pair let me just make it a little bit more had given so we'll make it a two-word verb and so the whole phrase the whole verbal phrase there is part of it so technically this is our simple subject so I'm going to put that in green so our simple subject for our first sentence is just the word Susan is also the same as our complete subject and then our complete predicate is a tour breakfast and our simple predicate is just ate that's all the verb in that sentence in our next sentence our complete subject is the gruff policeman but our simple subject is just policeman our complete predicate is had given the young driver a ticket our simple predicate is had given so let me read each sentence just using the simple subject in a simple predicate we have Susan 8 in our next sentence the simple subject combined with a simple predicate would be policeman had given ok so I just wanted to kind of introduce those vocabulary terms so the rest of what we're talking about makes sense release I hope it'll make sense so let's go ahead and undo what I've done here okay oops okay so now we're going to go back and talk about our vocabulary terms okay so as we had with the example of Susan it's possible that your complete subject in your simple subject are the same meaning both are just one word long take this sentence he ate the Apple quickly so that he could finish his work he is the doer of the eating so he is the subject of the sentence we can see that it is in the subjective case we have he so that's a really good clue let's go back here we see Anna subjected the doer of the verb we have he right here so that's a pretty darn good clue that that's the subject of the sentence let's look at the next sentence of course eight would be our simple predicate we have completely tone-deaf Bob sang the song out of key well who's singing the song it's Bob right so Bob is our simple subject and of course saying would be our simple predicate our complete predicate would be saying the song out of key in our next sentence we have musicians who's flying the musicians are missing musicians are that's our complete subject and our simple subject and so that's why the it is in pink the complete predicate is played music the simple predicate would be just play that's pretty straightforward I don't think very many of us would have missed the complete subject or the simple subject in this case you could argue by the way that this is part of the complete subject so we could put that in yellow but I bet as a level complication to it so if you you want to thank you probably most people think that this is the complete subject but this is the simple subject okay let's go on to the next one complete subject however can contain many words and we can see that all of this pink is the complete subject let's go ahead and read it and see what it says the blue and white car already rusty from years spent outside all of these words are about the car right we're just describing the car we're saying it's saying what its color is and we're saying that it's rusty and we're explaining how it got there so all of this content is about the car and we can see later on in our complete predicate we're going to hear what the car did the car roll to stop at the bottom of the hill so our simple predicate would be rolled to a stop you mean no it's not roll to a stop rolled would be our simple predicate roll to a stop of the vomit hill is our complete predicate okay our complete subject in our next sentence is the dainty politte petite woman with red hair all of these words are helping us understand the woman we know that the woman is dainty she's petite and we know what her hair color is now the rest of sense the predicate we're going to find out what happened with this lady she sat alone in the veranda as she sipped her lemonade so that is our complete predicate sat will be our simple predicate we can see that both of these subjects are long and whenever you have a long subject it can help and that it can be sometimes difficult to figure out what the subject is certainly when I speak it is often the case that I as a practical matter when we speak extemporaneously when we're not reading from a speech for example that we're kind of doing grammar on the sly and as a result if we have a long subject we may well use the incorrect verb we might use a singular verb on our simple folks plural or we might use a plural verb on our simple subject is singular and that's especially likely to happen if we have a long complete subject so when we're speaking in happens it's not a tragedy especially if the meaning is clear most of us don't even maybe don't even register that there's a problem and certainly we you don't make a big deal out of it but when we're in writing the writer has the opportunity to reread your revise to check to confirm that there are none of these errors so what is spoken it is not a big deal when it's in a final version that is presented of somebody else that's a problem we need to make sure that we're checking for these things and fixing them when they arise okay so let's look at our next section in English by the subject sentence is usually easy how do we do that well we locate the verb and then we look to the left or earlier in this sentence so here we found the verb bird R we're going to go to the left well there's only two words to the left z and cat and we're looking for a noun or pronoun well we know thee is it's a noun our front end so we know the subject has to be capped and that's going to be our simple subject oftentimes it's the word immediately to the left of the verb doesn't have to be but oftentimes it is that's a very common place to look so we have the cat purred while he's found on this owners lap our complete subject would be the cat our complete predicate would be purred while he sat on his loners lap our simple predicate would be purred let's go to our next sentence the old log cabin burned to the ground we find our verb here for after all it ends with Edie so it's pretty easy one to find we go to the left we have four words to pick from here Z well that's not an an or pronoun old that's not a noun or pronoun log actually can be a noun right then certainly cabin can be a noun in this context log is being used to describe cabin so even though it can be a noun it's actually being used as an adjective in this case usually when you have one word that can be a noun in front of another noun the one in front at least in English is likely to be used as a adjective so cabin is our simple subject this whole expression here the old log cabin and our complete subject cabin is our simple subject everything to the right of cabin is our complete predicate burned is our simple predicate let's go to the next sentence though board Nancy continues to work on the puzzle okay continues to work is our long verbal phrase so we go to the left of that we have three words to pick though well that's not a noun or pronoun board not a noun or pronoun Nancy that must be our simple subject in this case just like we had completely tone-deaf up here this is a long complete subject and Nancy is a simple subject our complete predicate is continues to work on the puzzle and our simple predicate is continues to work let's go to our next sentence he ate and drank all night okay well in this case we have a compound verb ate drink and so this is our simple predicate our complete predicate would be ate and drank all night and of course we look to the left of our compound simple predicate and we find the word heat it's our only choice unfortunately it is a pronoun and so he is our simple subject also our complete subject I'm going to mention one other possibility that I don't have an example for this sentence in this case we have a verb hits it and we have another verb listen so we have that compound verb or compound predicate simple predicate the whole thing here sit down and listen is the complete predicate so you may be thinking where is the subject is this a sentence fragment well no it's not because this is a command in English it is understood that we mean you sit down and listen after all when I say this expression sit down and listen if I were your mother saying this to you you'd probably be looking for a chair right now you get that this is an instruction to somebody so we use the term command for this that may sound a little harsh because it might be a very polite please if you wouldn't mind too gonna listen but the implied word here is you it's implied and so this is one of the few times where we can have a subject that you can't see but it really is there is in the meaning in the sentence so in this case you would be at both our complete subject and our simple subject but I don't want to muddy the water with adding this particular element because we're really not talking about commands I just wanted to let you know that in case you encounter a sand that's in your thrown well where the heck is the is the subject commands are not sentence fragments so that don't don't be worried about that okay now we're going to commute to this point you may be thinking well yeah this is lovely to know but I'm never going to make a mistake like this I'm not going to say Nancy continue to work I know Nancy is one person so I know I have to say continues you know you've told me some very boring grammar stuff but how does that I mean it's tough I didn't need to know because I wasn't going to make an error in this area well you're right most likely if you are a native English speaker even if you are a very experienced English speaker these are there as you're likely to make so while it may be interesting for some to know these particular grammar facts it's not necessarily that useful least at this point if I thought useful but now I'm going to put some skin in the game and let's look at the next one okay this is when things get interesting here are three senses let's go through these and figure out what's happening the miser an old man nursed a grudge against his son okay well we find the verb nursed okay so we go to the left and we have one two three four five five choices we can pretty quickly say that Z is neither a noun or pronoun and is neither a noun or pronoun old is neither a noun or pronoun but now we have miser which is a noun and we have men which is a noun and they're not adjacent to each other so the rule that we talked about with log-cabin doesn't apply so now we have to figure out which one is the simple such as the sentence I mean the whole phrase here is the complete subject the miser and old man but we're looking for the simple subject in this case it happens to be a fair distance from nurse and when we have three whole words here before we get to this now you may say well why isn't it man okay well I'm going to tell you I'm going to taste a couple different ways of knowing that man is not the simple subject the first is that this isn't a positive for miser this is a restatement of who the miser is we could have said it like this the miser who is an old man right that would be another way of doing it but when we have this animal man what we're saying is the miser I'm giving you more information about him he's a male and he's also old so you have more facts and a positive is kind of an FYI you might be interested in knowing but it's not essential for you to know this fact in order to make sense of the sentence we can make this go away and still have a perfectly good sentence the miser nursed a grudge against is that I mean the reader won't know his age you won't be sure that I guess the his will tell them that the miser is a man but other than that we wouldn't have any information about the gender of the miser but so this is good to know but it's not essential the sentence still works even without this fact so that's one way of saying okay this is in a positive and a positive isn't going to be the subdued sentence but you can make an argument that well maybe this is the appositive right and this is the the subject of the sentence I mean that's possible we could write it let me just go ahead and write that so you can see what that looks like an old man the miser nursed a grudge against his son I mean this is weird that we have an indefinite article here and a definite article there I would say that would be a pretty unusual structure to have this be via positive but I don't know that it violates a grammar rule and so I can't say for sure this is all right especially if we were to switch it up and say the old man a miser this definitely works and now we've made this expression into and a positive so it's no longer the subject now man is our subject and of course Nernst remains our simple predicate and our whole complete predicate is nursed a grudge against the Sun so we can flip these and it is possible for a a a a positive to come before the now let's look what that might look like and all man the miser nurse I'm sorry nursed a grudge well goodness it cannot die today I apologize nursed a grudge against to son okay this is word for word identical this sentence and this is a word for identical the only difference is a comma and the comma makes all the difference because we set off a positive with commas so if the positive in the middle of word we have to have a comma before the appositive and a comment after the appositive when I say have to there's some exceptions but generally speaking that's what you need to do if you have at the beginning of the students so you need to have an appositive let me see make a comment right after an A+ if you have the appositive at the end of the sentence you need to have the comma right before the appositive so this is set up to being a positive because we have to come here but you can see there is no comma on this side of Mizer so that tells the reader this isn't the appositive this is the subject of the sentence and these two commas around an old man tells the reader that an old man is the appositive it's the parenthetical it's the unnecessary but interesting piece of information so takeaway is when you have a noun or pronoun separated from the verb by a single comma that word in this case man isn't going to be a simple subject um so in this case miser is separated by two commas two commas is okay because in this case the two comments set off the positive so you don't want to have a single comma between your simple subject and your simple predicate okay so we've talked about the miser hopefully that's pretty clear why miser is a simple subject let's look at the next sentence the castle of King Arthur was large and drafty okay well we found the verb was and now we're going to go to the left we have one two three four five verbs well we know thee is neither a noun or pronoun we know of is neither a noun or pronoun so we're left with three words Castle King and Arthur well all three of these words are nouns we can look here we can see a noun immediately goes in front of another name where I talked about that the lead in now in the first sound when there is no separation between the two or other than a space there's no word in between the two nouns this is likely to be being used as an adjective modifying the next step and we can see that's the case here we are describing Arthur Arthur isn't you know the plumber Arthur or the blacksmith Arthur no it's that guy who's the king he this is the King Arthur so it's giving us more information about author Arthur it's modifying Arthur in exacting as an adjective so we can roll out King so now we have two choices Castle and Arthur well there's a couple of ways that we can solve this problem one way is just to make the rest of the text go away so I'm going to try that with Arthur first of all and let me just make all the other words go away and that will have a try of what a simple subject might be let's read the sentence let's first of all read this into the original format here we go so we know what what the original meaning was okay the castle of King Arthur was large and drafty now I'm going to would try to figure out the simple subject is I'm going to see if Arthur's two subject Arthur was large and drafty those distances don't mean the same thing to me I mean it may have been true that King Arthur was mentioned drafted not sure what it means to be drafted but we were talking about the castle and when we said that maybe King the real King Arthur was a slender and not ready this sentence doesn't purport to tell us anything about Arthur the human being it's all about this castle so we know between these two that Arthur is not going to be the simple subject so let's make all the other words in our complete subject go away but just have castle remaining Castle was large and drafting that what the original sentiment yeah I think it is so that is our simple subject now that we have seen our simple subject we can see if it works well just like miser was a single noun and nursed is the a a verb that works with a single noun we have Castle Castle also is a singular noun and was is also a singular verb so we are good now in this case it didn't really matter because Arthur is also a singular noun so even if Arthur been the subject of the sentence the sentence still would have worked right so it from a grammatical standpoint either one of these subjects would have still caused us to use was but it's good to know which one is the real subject let's go to the next sentence she's suddenly launched into song okay well we have over our verb launched our complete actually let's talk on this in a second so launched is our simple predicate or our verb now we go to the left we have two words choices we have she which is a pronoun and we have suddenly which is an adverb it when you see words that end in ly they are I think always adverbs I can't really think of any time or they wouldn't be certainly virtually always their adverbs so if an adverb it can't be a pronoun or a noun so it's pretty easy to figure out she has to be the simple subject as well as the complete subject because suddenly modifies launched so suddenly is actually part of the complete predicate launched is a simple predicate she is singular launched towards for the singular verb we are good to go okay so we went through in this case in our second sense let's go back to that for a second we talked about how our third being the subject of students really didn't make the sentence make sense and so sometimes just reading the sentence you can figure out that hey that that reading doesn't make sense and so you can figure out what the simple subject is that way but that doesn't always work so there's another trick to knowing that key that Arthur is not the simple subject sentence and that is because Arthur is the object of a preposition of is a preposition every preposition has an object usually the object comes after or to the right of the preposition it may not be immediately after in this case we have this adjective here and then we could even add another adjutant of will say good King Arthur so now we have two adjectives in between here and we can have several more if we wanted to so the object of the preposition is Arthur and the preposition is of and then these words good and King modify Arthur objects of prepositions can't be simple subjects they're working full-time being the object of the preposition and so we are good to go with with this once that's another reason now others not the only prepositions are very common one to be in this position it could have been the castle on the lake was large and drafty let's just write that one out the castle on the lake was large and drafty okay well this is still going to be sorry still going to be our simple subject and this is going to be our verb our simple predicate on is a preposition lake is the object of preposition so we know that it can't be the simple subject I guess I'll add that to our list might as well have one more example right okay okay so we've talked about when there's intervening words here let me make those green like the other examples now we're going to talk about when the words come before the simple subject and of course we can have both we can have words before our simple subject and after our simple subject so it's not either or it can be both but let's look at this scenario where we have these words in blue or our extra words so we have our verb here we sanded it saying we go to the left and we see one two three four four words well completely it into ly so we know it's an adverb tone deaf will tone is a noun uh you can describe something as a tone or D tone that's a good rule of thumb to figure out whether an award is a noun or not can you put a or the in front of it there are some exceptions to that but as a general rule that's going to work about 90 percenter maybe even more than that def though is an adjective somebody is diffic ant say a def or the DEF actually we can say that but in this case it's a noun if you need some adjective so tone is our only verb assume you're only now but it's acting as a word that is modifying deaf tone deaf what type of death is it deficit it's tone deaf a Bob literally isn't deaf in the sense that he can't hear anything he just can't hear the differences between musical notes and so that's one week on Sunday so it's a particular type of deafness and so this is modifying death and so it's acting as a modification of this adjective so we really don't have any nouns or pronouns other than Bob so it's pretty easy for us to figure out Bob is our simple subject saying is their simple predicate and of course our whole predicate is saying the song out of P but we still have these three words here I mean what's going on here well we're going to talk about that in second but let's go ahead and look at this next one and this is that long since we've already looked at this before this is also a sentence that we saw previously here we had completely tone-deaf Bob so here we have the blue and white car already recipe from years outside rolled to a stop at the bottom of the hill so we have words both before and words after and so we have a total of 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 we have 11 words going through though we can see most of our words are not nouns the blue and white thee is a noun marker or an article blue which is a type of adjective blue is a color it's adjectives and is a conjunction White is a adjective already rusty in this cases there working is an adverb Rusty's an adjective from is an preposition years so hey we found a noun yang for us so we have car and we have years so far a spent I it would be I guess that would be a past participle outside would be a preposition okay so we have two nouns and so let's just try the sentence if we stick with carving or simple so let's see if it makes sense car rolled to a stop at the bottom of the hill okay that makes sense let's try this one years rolled to a stop at the bottom of hill now that is a really sentence certainly doesn't mean the same thing that this long sentence means so we can rule out years we could also roll it out because it's the object of the preposition from so there's two reasons why years cannot work as are simple the third reason is that look there's one comma separating years from rolled so we know that blue that car is going to be our simple subject these words in front of it our adjectives modifying car just like this isn't an adjective phrase that modifies a bob decking almost like an appositive okay let's go to our next sentence we have two verbs here so we have one of those compound predicate sat played our whole predicate is going to be sat down at the keyboard and played beautifully we're looking to the left to see all the words that potentially can be the simple subject we have one two three four five six seven eight nine let's go through we have a conjunction although we have he okay he can be I mean it is a pronoun so it could be the subject had is part of a verb taken as a past participle never is an adverb any in some modifying is I think it's an adjective piano is a noun and the lessons is a noun and of course Larry is a noun so we have one two three four we have four choices okay well when you have two nouns back to back the first noun is is almost always going to be modifying the second noun and in this case that is true what kind of lessons TLS is not guitar lessons not soccer lessons not cooking lessons but piano lessons so this is even though it can be a noun it is acting as an adjective and so therefore it cannot be the simple subject of this sentence so now we're down to he and Larry well our old rule about the comma kicks in here right because we have our verb here and look we have exactly one comma between he in fact now this isn't an A+ but this is when these introductory phrases and so we should set off an introductory phrase and that tells us that we won't find the simple subject in that introductory phrase so we know he is not going to be due subject of our sentence now in this case he means the same thing as Larry right although he never he had never taken any panel lessons Larry sent down the keyboard and playing beautifully so he is Larry and Larry is he so I mean I guess in some sense because of the same guy they are thus both the simple subject but from a grammatical standpoint this isn't the word that's serving as a subject it's this or that surges is subject let's look at lessons those lessons make sense in this sentence lessons set down the keyboard and play beautifully no that doesn't that does not make any sense plus again we've got the common issue another way to look at is that we have this a subordinating conjunction a subordinating conjunction the words that are part of that the clause that is is begun by the subordinating conjunction cannot be this simple a subject of the complete sentence of the independent clause the follows okay so we know it's at the solarium sorry the he Larry sat down the keyboard and played beautifully okay so one thing that sometimes throws folks about the the subject verb agreement is the peculiarity of English you miss example okay we start with the man we know man is singular if we wanted to replace man with a pronoun we would use he right and if we were going to talk about his singing activities we would say the man sings if I were to say the man seen that doesn't sound like standard English or if we say he's seen that does not sound like standard English it does not sound correct okay let's say the men we're going to talk about a group of men we're going to say the four men okay so we actually not make it four we'll say to five men okay well men in this context is clearly plural so we need to have a plural verb and we say with the put with a plural subject seeing is the way that we make the plural verb and of course if we're replacing the five men with a pronoun we would use they they sing we just like we wouldn't say the man sing we wouldn't say the five men seems that doesn't sound right we wouldn't say they sings that doesn't sound right let's look a bit not lost sense we have the girls clearly we have more than one girl so it's plural and we would say the girls sing we wouldn't say the girls seeing girls things that isn't sound right if we wanted to replace the girls with a pronoun we would choose they and we would say they sing not they sings that's wrong so the cork here is it typically when we make a noun plural we add an S and we want to make a verb plural we take away the S because again when the verb is singular we have the ants on the sings but when we start with that when the verb is singular we add the s when the verb is plural we take the s away it's almost like you know we have a position every sentence has to have an S in it either needs to be on the verb or it has to be on the subject obviously in this middle sentence we don't have any s's except obviously the word sing because Men is made plural irregularly but obviously most nouns are going to be made with a with an S at the ends so if you want to think about it as conservation or of SS maybe that would help so don't be thrown by the idea of having plural verbs in Sumeria there well it's doesn't look for me there's no S on the end of it well that's just a quirk of English okay so that is an overview about how we are able to find the simple subject of the sentence and once we find it we can confirm that we're using the right verb sometimes with that difference let me go ahead and just make a little bit of a tweak here here I'm going to do this here the castle of the Norman invaders was large and drafty okay so we have the same issue here we have Castle as our simple subject and we have and it's our intervening words the Norman invaders so that's our green stuff and we have as our simple predicate what we can sorry wrong common we can test this and say well we tested the castle of King Arthur's large inducting we can test this by saying well let's make this go away castle was large and drafted that makes sense but let's say we thought well maybe invaders is our subject invaders was large and drafty or were large and drafty are we saying something about what the Norman invaders looked like or how they acted well no we're talking about their architecture not them as human beings and so clearly invaders is not the simple subject and we can tell us about the simple subject because we have our preposition here up and once the object of the preposition those darn invaders right and so because invaders is the object of the preposition we know it can't be the simple subject in the larger sentence so Castle go ahead and put this in pink is our simple subject this is an example though of how we sometimes get this off base because we have the word invaders right next to our verb so we've just said a plural word so if I were talking I'll be honest with you if I were talking I might well say were I might well say the castle of the Norman invaders were large and drafty simply because I had just said a word the indigenous that was plural my brain might think it's time for a plural verb what was is for singular verb singular subjects and words for plural subjects and so this is where we get into this is an example the grammar problem we have Castle which is a real subject Castle singular we need to use was but if invaders was the real subject we would have to use word invaders were Castle was and so this is one of the reasons you need to go back and check whenever you have a distance between between the simple subject and the verb where you have this intervening intervening words to make sure especially when they end with a plural or if the substance-abuse pearl a singular male or pronoun that you're using the right verb there so this is that this is a situation that is tricky this is the tricky scenario in which the writer may inadvertently use for the plural verb instead of plus this error occurs due to the nearness of invaders to the verb okay so we are now done with the subject of finding the simple subject and then also figuring out I'm sorry here finding up and then knowing that we have to make the subject and the verb agree in number let me just flip to our textbook and make sure there's nothing else we need to talk about um this is the discussion when a phrase or word intervenes between the subject and the verb in a sentence you should ignore it just like of King Arthur of the Norman invaders and match the verb to the pronoun and again in the cases I've been using I have been using a pronoun as in every one of the doctors was credible most of the brief was thoughtless check cited in this case most is our subject most was we've already talked about when we're dealing with indefinite pronouns how you have to sum some are countable and some are not going back here here are the ones that may be singular or plural slashes to a little bit of additional information about that thank you for your attention and have a wonderful day