How do you find the simple subject in a sentence? And what is a simple subject?

1 Answer
Feb 12, 2016

The simple subject is ONE main word that is the main subject of the sentence.

Explanation:

In English, the subject is who is doing what.
It is almost always one of the very first words.

For example,
"The turkey is roasting in the oven."
Here, "turkey" is the simple subject, and as you can see, it is essentially the first word.

Now, a simple subject comes into play when there are a variety of words describing/explaining the subject.
A complete subject would be all of those words, whilst the simple subject is just that one, main noun that is responsible for doing the action/verb.

For example,
"The turkey from the store was roasting in the oven."

Here, "turkey" is the simple subject, as it is the main noun that is doing the action (roasting).
"The turkey from the store" would be the complete subject.