Introduction
One major aspect of English grammar and usage that could easily betray the poor or the careless user of the English language is that of showing the relations that hold between the subject of a sentence and the corresponding verb. Observant teachers of English at the university level would notice that in both speech and writing, undergraduates fumble a lot as regards how verbs are inflected for number and person to agree with the subjects of sentences to the extent of wondering whether such candidates ever had any basic knowledge of the notion of agreement between subject and verb. Against this background, I intend, in this chapter, to take you through the rudiments of this all-important notion before I give the rules and the accompanying exceptions that may constitute pitfalls.
Preliminaries: Clarification of Basic Concepts
In this section of the chapter, I try to explicate the basic grammatical terms of ‘subject’ and ‘verb’ and then dwell on the concept of the ‘agreement’ that could obtain between them in sentences. To make the discussion quite explicit, I adopt a style of writing that still largely captures the interaction between the teacher and the students in a classroom setting and also provide ample examples to substantiate my claims. As such, the tone is one that you would find very engaging as you read on.
Subject
In grammar, the term subject is used to depict one of the basic elements in the structure of a typical English sentence. In a typical English sentence, you would expect to find the subject (S), predicator (P), complement (C) and adjunct (A). Consider the sentences below:
1. John plays football in Holland.
2. Mary and her sister understand French.
3. My parents teach.
In the sentences above, you would notice that certain elements depict the actual actions, and some are the receivers of the sufferers of the actions, while one shows the place where the action takes place. That element that performs the action in a sentence is referred to as the subject of the sentence; it is the doer of the action.
So, in sentence 1, the subject is ‘John’; in sentence 2, the subject is ‘Mary and her sister’; and in sentence 3, the subject is ‘My parents’. Accordingly, the verbs/predicators which depict the actions in the three sentences respectively are: ‘plays, ‘understand’ and ‘teach’. Moreover, the receivers of the respective actions are: ‘football’ and ‘French’ in sentences I and 2, while sentence 3 does not have any. These elements would be referred to as the complements. Finally, there is an element in sentence 1 which is not in the two other sentences. That element is captured with the words ‘in Holland’, showing where the action takes place. Any element that falls within this category to reflect the place, time, degree or manner of the action is referred to as the adjunct.
Having understood the fact the subject is one of the basic elements of a typical English sentence, you would also do well to notice that the corresponding verb that goes with sentence I, on the one hand, and those that go with sentences 2 and 3, on the other hand, have different morphological shapes which underline the relations that hold between the subject and the verb. We will return to this important issue later. Apart from such relations, the other elements, that is, the complement and the adjunct, could even be dropped from the structure of the sentence as obtained in sentence 2 which does not have an adjunct element and sentence 3 which has neither the complement nor the adjunct. What we can learn from these structures is that the subject and the verb are two key elements in the structure of a typical English sentence and that whether or not the other elements are present would not still affect the relations that should obtain between the subject and the verb which are almost always obligatory.
Please note that in sentences where there is the use of an adverb of frequency such as ‘always’, ‘sometimes’, ‘often’, ‘seldom’, ’rarely’, ‘usually’, or ‘never’, the Singular verb form that carries an ‘-s’ or ‘-es’ is still retained to agree with the singular subject such as ‘he’, ‘she’, ‘it’, ‘John’ or ‘Mary’.
