What is the role of the subject in a sentence?

• A. The object of the verb.
• B. A decorative element with no function.
• C. A modifier of the verb.
• D. The subject tells you what or who performs an action.

Answer: (D)

The subject is the person or thing the sentence is about, and in most sentences it’s the one performing the action of the verb. When you read a sentence, you can ask: who or what is doing the action? That is the subject. For example, in The student studies, The student is the one doing the studying, so it’s the subject. The subject isn’t the receiver of the action—that role belongs to the object in many sentences, like The student reads a book, where a book is the object being acted upon. It also isn’t a modifier; modifiers describe the verb or other parts of the sentence, not who or what the sentence is about. Sometimes a sentence describes a state rather than an action, as in The sky is blue, but the subject still identifies what the sentence is about. So the best description is that the subject tells you who or what performs the action or is being described.