In English, we have active, or "subject" focus sentences. This means the subject, or "doer" usually comes at the start of the sentence.
Look: I missed the bus. You bought a book. Qai won an award. Louisa rang Jared last night.
Sometimes it is easy to identify the subject, like above. But what happens if we have two people in the sentence? ("Narges helps Najma.") Or if we use the passive voice? If we're not sure, we can identify subjects and objects in sentences by following this process:
Identifying the verb To identify the subject, we first need to find the verb. In English, we have three ways we can identify a verb: 1) Knowing our doing, saying, thinking, sensing and being words 2) Changing the time (Yesterday I sang a song. Today I sing a song. Tomorrow I will sing a song.) 3) Changing the subject (He reads a book. I read a book. )
He reads a book. Yesterday I sang a song. Next week Aster will ring Tarik. My dog ate his food.
Identifying the subject Once we have the verb, we look for the subject. We ask “Who or what is doing this?”. Be careful: The subject is not always a person!
He reads a book. Who reads? He does. Therefore “he” is the subject. Yesterday I sang a song. Who sang? I did. Therefore “I” is the subject. Next week Aster will ring Tarik. Who will ring? Aster did. My dog ate his food. Who or what ate? My dog did.
Identifying the object Now we get to the tricky part. In functional grammar, we use the word "participant", which can mean both subjects and objects. But in traditional grammar, subjects and objects are different. Once we have the verb and subject, we can look for the object. We ask “What is the subject doing?” Be careful! Grammatically, the object of a sentence can be a person!
He reads a book. What is he reading? A book. Therefore “a book” is the object. Yesterday I sang a song. What am I singing? A song. Therefore “a song” is the object. Next week Aster will ring Tarik. What is Aster doing? Ringing Tarik. Who is she ringing? Tarik. Therefore, Tarik is the object of the sentence. My dog ate his food. What is my dog eating? His food. Therefore "his food" is the object.
Note that in many of these sentences, functional and traditional grammar are different:
Traditional: subject verb object Example: He reads a book. Functional: participant process participant
Traditional: subject verb object Example: Next week Aster will ring Tarik. Functional: circumstance (Time) participant process participant
To add another layer (parts of speech):
Traditional (POS): pronoun verb article noun Traditional: subject verb object Example: He reads a book. Functional: participant process participant
Traditional (POS): adverb proper noun verb proper noun Traditional: Subject verb object Example: Next week Aster will ring Tarik. Functional: circumstance (Time) participant process participant