Tour Page 4 - Verb Subjects
Often a sentence subject starts with a verb phrase. These phrases can be infinitive
form "to eat is nice" or gerund form "eating is wonderful.". Each of these phrase
types has a number of alternate forms and related objects such as "running the company
into the ground" is foolish.
Often the phrase is ambiguous until the entire sentence is seen, or at least the
verb. The following subject is a verb phrase.
Running children is difficult.
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A small, subtle change to the sentence can easily be made:
Running children are difficult.
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The interesting aspect in this example is that the subject becomes a noun phrase
should the third word be "are" instead os "is". "Running children are fast" is about
children, not running as we can see below.
Expanding the possible meanings for the subject phrase in this latter phrase shows
the following:
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The meanings all show examples of the noun forms for the word "children". The subject
is clearly a noun phrase this time.
The program differentiates these patterns by considering the full structure, instead
of just the localised grammatical structure.