In this video, I suggest you see or review everything concerning the subject function. This is certainly the most important grammatical function and clearly… the one to start with. You will see that although, at first glance, the subject may seem like an obvious concept, there are a few cases where you risk breaking your teeth! This is why this video is divided into two parts: a first for those who want to discover in all simplicity what a subject is: what it is used for, how we find it, how we analyze it and a second which really delves into this notion by approaching more complex cases... But let's start with the essentials. The subject is a function that allows a word or group of words to control the agreement of the verb. In other words, the verb is conjugated with the subject, according to the subject! This is the first thing to know. Depending on the word or group of words that serves as its subject, the verb will not have the same ending. Take for example this question that the narrator asks the Little Prince in Saint Exupery's novel: "So you come from another planet? » You see that the verb venir ends in -s because its subject is the pronoun Tu. But if the subject had been different, the verb could have changed its ending. We would have written: "The Little Prince comes from another planet" with a -t or even "The Little Prince and I come from another planet". It is therefore important to keep in mind that it is the subject which controls the agreement of the verb and these two components of the sentence, subject and verb, are so linked that in general, to find the subject, we ask ourselves "who is it + VERB? » to find the subject: “Who comes from another planet ? » It’s Tu… or You if you prefer… This is the most effective technique for easily finding the subject of a verb. This subject can have different natures, belong to different grammatical classes. Most of the time it is a noun or a noun phrase as in the sentence "The little prince did not seem to hear my questions. ", the subject is the noun phrase "the little prince". Very often we also find pronouns in subject function, notably personal pronouns: (I, you, he, she, one, we, you, they and they) "He didn't seem to hear my questions. » . But in certain rarer cases, the subject function can be occupied by a verb in the infinitive "Yawning is forbidden" or even an infinitive phrase: "Talking to the king is forbidden". It also happens that the subject of a verb is a whole clause as in the expression "birds of a feather flock together. You see that the clause "which resembles itself" is the subject of the verb "to assemble". We are here, however, on very specific cases. To put it simply and recap this first part of the course, there are three things to remember: The first is that we find the subject of a verb by asking who is who or what is who + Verb. The second is that the subject controls the agreement of the verb, it determines the person to whom it will be conjugated. Last thing to know: in general the subject is a noun, a pronoun or a noun phrase. I think that if you are in secondary school, knowing what I have just explained to you is enough... but if you want to go further, I suggest that you now look at some cases of surprising subjects: subjects which do not quite correspond to the definition that I have given or, if you prefer, subjects which move away from what we are used to considering as a subject... We will notably talk about conjugated verbs without a subject, subjects without a conjugated verb! First thing: Sometimes some verbs do n't have a subject... at least not a clearly stated subject. For example in the imperative: in the sentence “Look at the sky. » we understand that the subject is a “you” thanks to the ending of the verb but this “you” is not there. The subject is therefore not always clearly expressed and sometimes it is only guessed by the ending of the verb, as is the case in Latin, Italian or Spanish. Second special case: Some subjects refer to nothing… No one does the action. We are talking here about particular verbs like pleuvoir, neiger, or even the verb falloir: those that we call impersonal verbs. In this quote, "one should never listen to the flowers. ", the personal pronoun it is indeed the subject, but it does not refer to anything. We are in a real bind if we want to answer the question Who is it that is needed? As I said, it is an impersonal verb or the impersonal "he": a personal pronoun which, against all odds, does not refer to anyone. Third special case: the subject sometimes undergoes the action and does not accomplish it. In certain turns of phrase, the subject does indeed command the agreement of the verb but does not perform the action: it undergoes it. This is what we call the passive voice: "The next planet was inhabited by a drinker." Here, it is not the planet that performs the action of inhabiting but the drinker... Who finds himself not in the place of the subject but in the place of the complement. In fact, this sentence is constructed backwards and a simpler way of saying the same thing would be to put the one who acts in the place of the subject: A drinker inhabits the next planet. This is the active voice. If you want to go further, there must be some videos devoted to the passive voice on the channel. I leave you a link in the description. Finally, last special case, sometimes, a verb that is not conjugated still has a subject of its own. We are talking here about quite specific notions: certain rather rare subordinate clauses like the infinitive subordinate clause or the participle subordinate clause. For example in the sentence "you hear the well sing. », the verb to sing is not conjugated: it is in the infinitive. In general, a verb in the infinitive does not have its own subject. Here, however, it is indeed the well that sings. It is therefore sometimes necessary to carry out a fairly in-depth analysis of the subject to realize the subtleties of a sentence. In general, the subject is clearly evoked, it is a precisely identified person or thing that accomplishes the action of the verb while allowing its agreement… But this is not always the case either. I hope that this video has allowed you to learn more about the subject. Thank you for following it so far and I wish you a good day.