Complete Subject vs Simple Subject?

Question

My daughter has an assignment where she is supposed to underline the Complete Subject and write the Simple Subject.
There's a difference?
I don't understand my daughter's 4th grade homework assignment!

Help? Or should I say, HELP!

Usenet · Accepted Answer

[nq:1]My daughter has an assignment where she is supposed to underline the Complete Subject and write the Simple Subject. There's a difference? I don't understand my daughter's 4th grade homework assignment! Help? Or should I say, HELP![/nq]
I searched Google for:
"complete subject" "simple subject'
with the quotes
(http://www.google.com/search?q=%22complete+subject%22+%22simple+subject%22 or http://tinyurl.com/23h68).
The second hit was a page entitled "Subjects and Predicates" (http://www.english.uiuc.edu/cws/wworkshop/grammar/subjects and predicates. htm&e=7421 or http://tinyurl.com/26r8p) :

In English, every sentence has two essential parts: a complete subject and a complete predicate.
Subjects
The complete subject is the simple subject (a noun or a pronoun) plus any words or group of words modifying the simple subject that tells who or what the sentence is about:
The high from my Mountain Dew usually lasts about an hour.

To find the complete subject, ask Who? or What? insert the verb, and finish the question. The answer is the complete subject:
What usually lasts about an hour? The high from my Mountain Dew.

The simple subject is the essential noun, pronoun, or group of words acting as a noun that cannot be left out of the complete subject. In order to identify it, remove the complements and modifiers and whatever left is the simple subject:
The (article)
high (simple subject)
from my Mountain Dew (prepositional phrase)
usually lasts about an hour. (predicate)
TIP: Does the sentence make sense with just the word ("high") identified as the simple subject?
(The) high usually lasts about an hour.

Regards to Pocahontas.

Jack Gavin

Usenet · Answer

[nq:1]My daughter has an assignment where she is supposed to underline the Complete Subject and write the Simple Subject. There's a difference? I don't understand my daughter's 4th grade homework assignment! Help? Or should I say, HELP![/nq]
I suspect that your daughter is in an American public school.

If you wish to keep her there, then you must follow her homework assignments with an eye toward gaining insight into the nature and degree of her teachers' misapprehensions and ignorance-based prejudices. Based on those assessments, you can then train your daughter to supply the responses that are likely to please the teachers, thus earning your daughter good grades.
In this particular case, it might behoove you to contact the teacher and try to find out what simple-minded paradigm-du-jour the teacher has latched onto, without betraying the fact that you have become aware of the manifest fact that the teacher is stupid.

\P. Schultz

Usenet · Answer

[nq:1]My daughter has an assignment where she is supposed to underline the Complete Subject and write the Simple Subject. There's a difference? I don't understand my daughter's 4th grade homework assignment![/nq]
Here's an explanation from The Perrin-Smith Handbook of Current English (1962), using terminology and an approach that our linguistics-oriented friends may find distasteful:
"The subject of a sentence is a noun or noun equivalent (pronoun, noun clause, gerund, infinitive) that is the starting point of the statement: The British /submarine/ sank the cruiser.

The /simple subject/ is a single word, like /submarine/ in the ... sentence above. The /complete subject/ is the simple subject and any words modifying it: /The British submarine/."
Terms like "the starting point of the statement" are admittedly vague beyond any utility.

Martin Ambuhl

Usenet · Answer

In our last episode, , the lovely and talented The Grammer Genious broadcast on alt.usage.english:
[nq:2]My daughter has an assignment where she is supposed to ... 4th grade homework assignment! Help? Or should I say, HELP![/nq]
[nq:1]I suspect that your daughter is in an American public school. If you wish to keep her there, then you ... latched onto, without betraying the fact that you have become aware of the manifest fact that the teacher is stupid.[/nq]
Evidently this teacher's idiosyncratic terminology is shared by thousands of schools in the US and Canada including such universities as Stanford and the University of Ottawa. For a list of institutions prolmugating this simple-minded paradigm-du-jour, simply enter the search string "complete simple subject predicate" in Google.

I have discovered that one of the worst things a teacher can do it to attempt to teach a student something the student does not already know. Evidently it is nearly as bad to teach something that someone on the internet has never heard of.

Lars Eighner ~~finger for geek code~~ (Email Removed) http://www.io.com/~eighner/ You are wise, witty and wonderful, but you spend too much time reading this sort of stuff. Jim Critchfield

Usenet · Answer

[nq:2]My daughter has an assignment where she is supposed to ... difference? I don't understand my daughter's 4th grade homework assignment![/nq]
[nq:1]Here's an explanation from The Perrin-Smith Handbook of Current English (1962), using terminology and an approach that our ... words modifying it: /The British submarine/." Terms like "the starting point of the statement" are admittedly vague beyond any utility.[/nq]
So:
- "complete subject" = the subject NP
- "simple subject" = the head of the subject NP
Nowt distasteful there, lad.

johnF
"What I say in such discussions might not always be easy to grasp , but what I say is never wrong."
Mark Wallace,

Usenet · Answer

Thanks AUE!
You've all been helpful.
JS

Usenet · Answer

[nq:1]I have discovered that one of the worst things a teacher can do it to attempt to teach a student something the student does not already know.[/nq]
Especially, when it is going to be of no possible use to the student or anyone else.

Rob Bannister

Complete Subject vs Simple Subject?

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