Core Patterns
Subjects & Verbs
What you’ll learn
- Find the subject and the verb in any statement or question
- Draw the base line and place the full vertical divider
- Keep a multi-word verb phrase together in one slot
- Recognise the same split in a dependency tree
The base line
Draw one horizontal line. The subject goes on the left, the verb on the right, and a vertical line cuts straight through the base line to separate them. That is the whole of the first diagram.
The vertical crosses the line, extending above and below it. Later you will meet verticals that stop at the base line, and the difference is what distinguishes a direct object from a subject.
Find the verb
The word that changes when you move the sentence in time. Rain falls → Rain fell, so falls is the verb.Ask who or what does it
“What falls?” → Rain. That is the subject.Draw the line and cut it
Subject left, verb right, full vertical between them.
“Rain falls.”
- nsubjNominal subject
- ROOTRoot of the sentence
Comparing the two views
Verb phrases stay together
Most English verbs are more than one word: was whistling, had been cleaned, will have finished. The helping words are auxiliaries, and however many there are, the whole phrase occupies one slot on the base line.
This is a genuine difference between the two views. Reed-Kellogg treats a verb phrase as a single unit because it does a single job. The dependency parse splits it apart: the last verb becomes the root and each auxiliary hangs off it as aux or auxpass.
“The kettle was whistling.”
- detDeterminer
- nsubjNominal subject
- auxAuxiliary
- ROOTRoot of the sentence
Comparing the two views
aux beneath whistling — but in exchange it never says the two words form one verb.Passives and questions
In a passive sentence the subject is not doing the action — it is receiving it. Windows had been cleaned. has windows as its subject even though somebody else did the cleaning. Diagram it exactly as any other subject; the passive is visible only in the verb phrase.
Questions hide the subject inside the verb phrase. The fix is to turn the question back into a statement first, then diagram that.
Rewrite the question as a statement
Had the windows been cleaned? → The windows had been cleaned.Find the subject in the statement
Now it is obvious: windows.Diagram the original word order
The diagram uses the sentence’s real words; you only rearranged them in your head to find the subject.
“Windows had been cleaned.”
- nsubjpassPassive nominal subject
- auxAuxiliary
- auxpassPassive auxiliary
- ROOTRoot of the sentence
Comparing the two views
nsubjpass rather than nsubj, and been as auxpass — so the tree records that this subject is the thing being acted on. In the Reed-Kellogg diagram it sits in the ordinary subject slot and you have to read the verb to know.Key terms
- Subject
- The noun or pronoun the clause is about. It governs the verb’s number, which is why Rain falls but Leaves fall. Rain falls. The windows had been cleaned. — one word or a whole phrase.
See: Grammar Basics
- Predicate
- The verb and everything travelling with it. In these first diagrams it is just the verb phrase; later it will hold objects and complements too. Rain falls. The kettle was whistling on the stove.
See: Grammar Basics
- Finite verb
- A verb carrying tense, which can head a clause on its own. The non-finite forms cannot, and each gets its own topic later. The kettle whistles. Windows had been cleaned. — had carries the tense; cleaned alone could not head the clause.
See: Grammar Basics, Infinitives, Gerunds
- Voice
- Whether the subject acts (active) or is acted on (passive). Visible in the verb phrase, and named directly in the dependency labels. The storm flooded the road. — active. The road was flooded by the storm. — passive.