Contention in the classroom.

[Dauvit Anthony Tetreau]

I had an argument in my collage classroom today over what the subject of the sentence: "The last person who stole our jagermeister was eaten by marmots." which is it?

[Barb_D]

Full subject: The last person who stole our Jagermeister
Simple subject: person

[Dauvit Anthony Tetreau]

THANKYOU! Why is it that some teachers WILL NOT take any correction from students... -.-

[Barb_D]

Um... why is that?

[Dauvit Anthony Tetreau]

She (my teacher) insisted that the marmots were the subject and whenever I tried to get her to explain how; she'd use a different example that had nothing to do with what I was talking about.

[Barb_D]

When you have a passive sentence, the grammatical subject receives the action. The "do-er" (or agent, or whatever you want to call it) is not the grammatical subject.

Show her a simpler sentence: My chocolate bar was eaten by my classmate. The grammatical subject is "My chocolate bar." The "do-er" was your classmate, but don't confuse that with the grammatical subject.

[Dauvit Anthony Tetreau]

That was my understanding but what this teacher was saying totally confused that. I kept thinking "how can a marmot eaten something? lol

[Dauvit Anthony Tetreau]

Does changing the the sentence from passive to active like: "A marmot ate the last person who stole our jagermeister." make marmot the subject? That's the way I remember it working.

[Barb_D]

Exactly. In the active voice, the grammatical subject is "do-er" of the action. In the passive voice, the grammarical subject is the recipient of the action.

[Tdol]

Does changing the the sentence from passive to active like: "A marmot ate the last person who stole our jagermeister." make marmot the subject? That's the way I remember it working.

Yes, it does, but, a Barb said, it does not make it the subject of the passive sentence. The purpose of the passive is to have a different subject and focus from the active.