nsubj
: nominal subject
A nominal subject (nsubj
) is a nominal which is the syntactic subject and the proto-agent of a clause.
That is, it is in the position that passes typical grammatical test for subjecthood, and this argument is the more agentive,
the do-er, or the proto-agent of the clause.
(See csubj for when the subject is clausal. See nsubjpass and csubjpass for when the subject is not
the proto-agent argument due to valence changing operations.) This nominal may be headed by a noun,
or it may be a pronoun or relative pronoun, or in ellipsis contexts, other things such as an adjective.
The nsubj
role is only applied to semantic arguments of a predicate.
When there is an empty argument in a grammatical subject position (sometimes called a pleonastic or expletive),
it is labeled as expl. If there is then a displaced subject
in the clause, as in the English existential there construction, it will be labeled as nsubj
.
The governor of the nsubj
relation might not always be a verb: when
the verb is a copular verb, the root of the clause is the complement
of the copular verb, which can be an adjective or noun, including a noun marked by a preposition,
as in the examples below.
In English, the nsubj
normally precedes the predicate that it depends on, but this need not be the case,
both for the displaced subjects of expletive constructions and in other cases of stylistic inversion, such
as the example headed by the predicate come below.
Treebank Statistics (UD_English)
This relation is universal.
20042 nodes (8%) are attached to their parents as nsubj
.
19280 instances of nsubj
(96%) are right-to-left (child precedes parent).
Average distance between parent and child is 2.50728470212554.
The following 60 pairs of parts of speech are connected with nsubj
: VERB-PRON (10136; 51% instances), VERB-NOUN (3164; 16% instances), VERB-PROPN (1478; 7% instances), ADJ-PRON (1214; 6% instances), NOUN-PRON (1011; 5% instances), ADJ-NOUN (994; 5% instances), NOUN-NOUN (474; 2% instances), NOUN-PROPN (207; 1% instances), ADJ-PROPN (183; 1% instances), ADV-PRON (146; 1% instances), ADV-NOUN (119; 1% instances), PROPN-PRON (90; 0% instances), PRON-NOUN (76; 0% instances), VERB-ADJ (74; 0% instances), VERB-DET (71; 0% instances), AUX-PRON (68; 0% instances), PRON-PRON (63; 0% instances), VERB-NUM (62; 0% instances), PROPN-NOUN (56; 0% instances), NUM-PRON (43; 0% instances), ADJ-DET (30; 0% instances), NUM-NOUN (29; 0% instances), NOUN-NUM (22; 0% instances), PROPN-PROPN (20; 0% instances), PRON-PROPN (18; 0% instances), NOUN-DET (16; 0% instances), ADV-PROPN (15; 0% instances), ADJ-ADJ (13; 0% instances), NUM-PROPN (13; 0% instances), ADJ-NUM (12; 0% instances), ADP-PRON (11; 0% instances), DET-PRON (11; 0% instances), NOUN-ADJ (11; 0% instances), SYM-NOUN (11; 0% instances), SYM-PRON (11; 0% instances), AUX-NOUN (8; 0% instances), VERB-VERB (8; 0% instances), ADP-NOUN (5; 0% instances), DET-NOUN (5; 0% instances), PROPN-NUM (5; 0% instances), VERB-ADV (5; 0% instances), X-NOUN (5; 0% instances), AUX-PROPN (4; 0% instances), PROPN-ADJ (4; 0% instances), NOUN-VERB (3; 0% instances), ADV-ADJ (2; 0% instances), NUM-DET (2; 0% instances), VERB-X (2; 0% instances), ADJ-ADP (1; 0% instances), ADJ-ADV (1; 0% instances), ADJ-VERB (1; 0% instances), ADV-DET (1; 0% instances), ADV-NUM (1; 0% instances), DET-VERB (1; 0% instances), INTJ-DET (1; 0% instances), INTJ-NOUN (1; 0% instances), NUM-NUM (1; 0% instances), PRON-DET (1; 0% instances), PRON-SYM (1; 0% instances), VERB-SYM (1; 0% instances).
Treebank Statistics (UD_English-ESL)
This relation is universal.
10016 nodes (10%) are attached to their parents as nsubj
.
9688 instances of nsubj
(97%) are right-to-left (child precedes parent).
Average distance between parent and child is 2.20666932907348.
The following 52 pairs of parts of speech are connected with nsubj
: VERB-PRON (5891; 59% instances), VERB-NOUN (1353; 14% instances), ADJ-PRON (892; 9% instances), NOUN-PRON (501; 5% instances), ADJ-NOUN (411; 4% instances), NOUN-NOUN (200; 2% instances), VERB-DET (133; 1% instances), VERB-PROPN (122; 1% instances), ADV-PRON (45; 0% instances), PROPN-NOUN (44; 0% instances), ADJ-DET (43; 0% instances), NOUN-DET (38; 0% instances), AUX-PRON (35; 0% instances), ADJ-PROPN (34; 0% instances), NOUN-PROPN (32; 0% instances), ADV-NOUN (29; 0% instances), NUM-PRON (29; 0% instances), PROPN-PRON (27; 0% instances), VERB-ADJ (25; 0% instances), PRON-PRON (16; 0% instances), NUM-NOUN (13; 0% instances), PRON-NOUN (13; 0% instances), NOUN-NUM (12; 0% instances), VERB-NUM (12; 0% instances), ADJ-VERB (5; 0% instances), NUM-PROPN (5; 0% instances), PROPN-DET (5; 0% instances), ADJ-ADJ (4; 0% instances), DET-PRON (4; 0% instances), VERB-ADV (4; 0% instances), VERB-SYM (4; 0% instances), ADV-PROPN (3; 0% instances), AUX-NOUN (3; 0% instances), NOUN-ADJ (3; 0% instances), PROPN-NUM (3; 0% instances), VERB-VERB (3; 0% instances), DET-NOUN (2; 0% instances), SYM-NOUN (2; 0% instances), VERB-PART (2; 0% instances), X-NOUN (2; 0% instances), ADJ-NUM (1; 0% instances), ADJ-PART (1; 0% instances), ADJ-SYM (1; 0% instances), ADP-DET (1; 0% instances), ADP-NOUN (1; 0% instances), ADV-DET (1; 0% instances), NOUN-VERB (1; 0% instances), NUM-DET (1; 0% instances), PART-DET (1; 0% instances), PRON-DET (1; 0% instances), PROPN-PROPN (1; 0% instances), SYM-DET (1; 0% instances).
Treebank Statistics (UD_English-LinES)
This relation is universal.
6804 nodes (8%) are attached to their parents as nsubj
.
6437 instances of nsubj
(95%) are right-to-left (child precedes parent).
Average distance between parent and child is 2.34861845972957.
The following 43 pairs of parts of speech are connected with nsubj
: VERB-PRON (3441; 51% instances), VERB-NOUN (1373; 20% instances), VERB-PROPN (787; 12% instances), ADJ-PRON (282; 4% instances), NOUN-PRON (243; 4% instances), ADJ-NOUN (176; 3% instances), NOUN-NOUN (108; 2% instances), AUX-PRON (66; 1% instances), PRON-PRON (48; 1% instances), ADJ-PROPN (43; 1% instances), NOUN-PROPN (43; 1% instances), PRON-NOUN (31; 0% instances), VERB-ADJ (24; 0% instances), PROPN-PRON (22; 0% instances), AUX-NOUN (18; 0% instances), VERB-NUM (14; 0% instances), ADV-NOUN (12; 0% instances), AUX-PROPN (10; 0% instances), PRON-PROPN (9; 0% instances), ADV-PRON (7; 0% instances), ADP-NOUN (5; 0% instances), PROPN-PROPN (5; 0% instances), PROPN-NOUN (4; 0% instances), PUNCT-PRON (4; 0% instances), DET-PRON (3; 0% instances), NOUN-X (3; 0% instances), NUM-NOUN (3; 0% instances), ADJ-ADJ (2; 0% instances), ADP-PRON (2; 0% instances), NUM-PROPN (2; 0% instances), PART-PRON (2; 0% instances), ADJ-ADV (1; 0% instances), ADJ-NUM (1; 0% instances), ADJ-SCONJ (1; 0% instances), ADV-PROPN (1; 0% instances), DET-PROPN (1; 0% instances), INTJ-PROPN (1; 0% instances), NOUN-ADJ (1; 0% instances), NOUN-NUM (1; 0% instances), NUM-PRON (1; 0% instances), PROPN-ADJ (1; 0% instances), SCONJ-PROPN (1; 0% instances), VERB-X (1; 0% instances).
nsubj in other languages: [bg] [cs] [de] [el] [en] [es] [eu] [fa] [fi] [fr] [ga] [he] [hu] [it] [ja] [ko] [sv] [u]