The Semantics of Sentence Subjects

Abstract

It is proposed that subjects of transitive verbs in English are perceived as belonging to a semantic hierarchy, with human subjects most acceptable and non-human subjects less so. As a test, six semantically defined classes of subjects were systematically interchanged in simple, well-formed sentences: in Experiment I, 25 students rated the resultant sentences for acceptability; in Experiment II, 25 more students altered one word in the same sentences to make more sense. The results affirmed the following hierarchy: human nouns, animal nouns, concrete-count nouns, concrete-mass nouns, abstract-count nouns, and abstract-mass nouns. In Experiment I, a subject higher in the hierarchy was found to replace one lower down more sensibly than the reverse; in Experiment II, the alterations were consistent with these judgments. The results suggest that, linguistically, the features [ +Human], [ +Animate], and [ +Concrete] are canonical or unmarked in the semantic representation of subjects. The consequences of this are discussed for the processes of interpreting and composing sentences.