Raised subject

Question

He seemed to be suggesting that he was wrong about me.I think that the whole sentence above is the main clause and He is a raised subject in that sentence.Am I correct?

CalifJim · Accepted Answer

Yes. (It seemed that he was suggesting ....)

CJ

Anonymous · Answer

anonymous
He seemed to be suggesting that he was wrong about me.
I think that the whole sentence above is the main clause and He is a raised subject in that sentence.

He seemed to be suggesting that he was wrong about me.

Yes: "he is a raised subject.

CJ's test with extrapositional "it" is a good one. There are others.

A raised subject doesn't have a direct semantic relation with the verb. Syntactically it is located in the matrix clause, but semantically it belongs solely in the embedded clause (underlined). The meaning is very close to that of "He seemingly was suggesting that he was wrong about me", where we have the adverb "seemingly" instead of the catenative verb "seem".

To put it another way: the verb that "he" relates to syntactically is higher in the constituent structure than the one it relates to semantically.

Raised subject

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