Subject & Object (Questions)

[crazyaboutenglish]

Hi, I thought I learned to tell the subject from the object in a sentence but I don't know abut these two sentences:-

There are a lot of cars on the road.

Is "cars" the subject and "road" the object?

Whose potatoes are these?

Is "potatoes" the subject and "these" the object?

I'm lost! Can anyone help me please?

[BobK]

Hi, I thought I learned to tell the subject from the object in a sentence but I don't know abut these two sentences:-

There are a lot of cars on the road.

Is "cars" the subject and "road" the object?
Where are the cars?
In 'The traffic damages the road' what is the object?
Does your sentence have an object at all?

Whose potatoes are these?

Is "potatoes" the subject and "these" the object?

I'm lost! Can anyone help me please?

'Not all sentences have objects.' In that one, 'objects' is the object.
In some sentences - such as this one - there is no object..

b

[TheParser]

[QUOTE=crazyaboutenglish;808241]

There are a lot of cars on the road.



Whose potatoes are these?


NOT A TEACHER


(1) My teachers told me to ignore "there" when we analyze a "there" sentence.

(a) So we get "Are a lot of cars on the road."

(b) Now we put those words in regular order: A lot of cars are on the road.

(c) "A lot of" = "many."

(d) So our sentence is "Many cars are on the road."

(i) As you can see, "cars" is the subject.

(ii) There is no object of a verb (such as "I eat broccoli"), but there is an object of the

preposition "on." And what is that object? Yes, it is "road." CAREFUL: When a '

teacher asks a student to identify an object, she is usually referring to the object of a

verb (such as the object "broccoli"). If you answer "road," BE SURE to say: "Road is

the object of the preposition on." Or say "Broccoli is the object of the verb eat." Your
teacher will be very proud of you.

(2) I think that we have to put the second sentence in regular order:

These are whose potatoes?

As you can see, these is the subject.

And there is no object.

"Whose potatoes" is called a subject complement because those two words refer to

the subject "these." That is, "These = whose potatoes?"

Possible answer: These are Tom's potatoes. "These = Tom's potatoes."