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This page pertains to UD version 2.

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. 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.

New from v2: The nsubj relation is also used for the nominal subject of a passive verb or verb group, even though the subject is then not typically the proto-agent argument due to valency changing operations. For languages that have a grammaticalized passive transformation, it is strongly recommended to use the subtype nsubj:pass in such cases. If the subject is of a copular clause whose predicate is itself a clause, nsubj:outer may be used.

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.

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.)

Clinton defeated Dole
nsubj(defeated, Clinton)
Dole was defeated by Clinton
nsubj:pass(defeated, Dole)
The car is red .
nsubj(red, car)
Sue is a true patriot .
nsubj(patriot, Sue)
We are in the barn .
nsubj(barn, We)
Agatha is in trouble .
nsubj(trouble, Agatha)
There is a ghost in the room .
expl(is, There)
nsubj(is, ghost)
These links present the many viewpoints that existed .
acl:relcl(viewpoints, existed)
nsubj(existed, that)

nsubj in other languages: [bej] [bg] [bm] [cop] [cs] [de] [el] [en] [es] [ess] [et] [eu] [fi] [fr] [fro] [ga] [gd] [gsw] [hy] [it] [ja] [ka] [kk] [kmr] [ky] [mr] [myv] [no] [pa] [pcm] [pt] [qpm] [ro] [ru] [sl] [sv] [swl] [tr] [u] [uz] [vi] [yue] [zh]