Grammatical form and meaning

The dictionary helps me find words.

Strangely enough, ice cream appeared on the table.

The man who is sitting over there told me that he just bought a ticket to Tahiti.

Nothing else is good enough.

That nothing else is good enough shouldn't come as a surprise.

To eat six different kinds of vegetables a day is healthy.

Despite her objections, he sold us ten bags of clothes.

There are several criteria for identifying subjects:^[5]

1. 
   Subject-verb agreement: The subject agrees with the finite verb in person and number, e.g. I am vs. *I is.^[6]
   
2. 
   Position occupied: The subject typically immediately precedes the finite verb in declarative clauses in English, e.g. Tom laughs.
   
3. 
   Semantic role: A typical subject in the active voice is an agent or theme, i.e. it performs the action expressed by the verb or when it is a theme, it receives a property assigned to it by the predicate.
   

Of these three criteria, the first one (agreement) is the most reliable. The subject in English and many other languages agrees with the finite verb in person and number (and sometimes in gender as well). The second and third criterion are merely strong tendencies that can be flouted in certain constructions, e.g.

1. 
   Tom is studying chemistry. - The three criteria agree identifying Tom as the subject.
   
2. 
   Is Tom studying chemistry? - The 1st and the 3rd criteria identify Tom as the subject.
   
3. 
   Chemistry is being studied (by Tom). - The 1st and the 2nd criteria identify Chemistry as the subject.
   

In the first sentence, all three criteria combine to identify Tom as the subject. In the second sentence, which involves the subject-auxiliary inversion of a yes/no-question, the subject immediately follows the finite verb (instead of immediately preceding it), which means the second criterion is flouted. And in the third sentence expressed in the passive voice, the 1st and the 2nd criterion combine to identify chemistry as the subject, whereas the third criterion suggests that by Tom should be the subject because Tom is an agent.

4. 
   Morphological case: In languages that have case systems, the subject is marked by a specific case, often the nominative.
   
5. 
   Omission: Many languages systematically omit a subject that is known in discourse.
   

The fourth criterion is better applicable to languages other than English given that English largely lacks morphological case marking, the exception being the subject and object forms of pronouns, I/me, he/him, she/her, they/them.
The fifth criterion is helpful in languages that typically drop pronominal subjects, such as Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, Latin, Greek, Japanese, and Mandarin. Though most of these languages are rich in verb forms for determining the person and number of the subject, Japanese and Mandarin have no such forms at all. This dropping pattern does not automatically make a language a pro-drop language. In other languages, like English and French, most clauses should have a subject, which should be either a noun (phrase), a pronoun, or a clause. This is also true when the clause has no element to be represented by it. This is why verbs like rain must have a subject such as it, even if nothing is actually being represented by it. In this case, it is an expletive and a dummy pronoun. In imperative clauses, most languages elide the subject, even in English which typically requires a subject to be present, e.g.

• 
  Give it to me.
  
• 
  Dā mihi istud. (Latin)
  
• 
  Me dá isso. (Brazilian Portuguese)
  
• 
  Dá-me isso. (European Portuguese)
  
• 
  Dámelo. (Spanish)
  

In linguistics, an object is any of several types of arguments.^[1] In subject-prominent, nominative-accusative languages such as English, a transitive verb typically distinguishes between its subject and any of its objects, which can include but are not limited to direct objects,^[2] indirect objects,^[3] and arguments of adpositions (prepositions or postpositions); the latter are more accurately termed oblique arguments, thus including other arguments not covered by core grammatical roles, such as those governed by case morphology (as in languages such as Latin) or relational nouns (as is typical for members of the Mesoamerican Linguistic Area). In ergative-absolutive languages, for example most Australian Aboriginal languages, the term "subject" is ambiguous, and thus the term "agent" is often used instead to contrast with "object", such that basic word order is often spoken of in terms such as Agent-Object-Verb (AOV) instead of Subject-Object-Verb (SOV).^[4] Topic-prominent languages, such as Mandarin, focus their grammars less on the subject-object or agent-object dichotomies but rather on the pragmatic dichotomy of topic and comment.^[5]
A number of criteria can be employed for identifying objects, e.g.:^[8]
1. Subject of passive sentence: Most objects in active sentences can become the subject in the corresponding passive sentences.^[9]
2. Position occupied: In languages with strict word order, the subject and the object tend to occupy set positions in unmarked declarative clauses. The object follows the subject.
3. Morphological case: In languages that have case systems, objects are marked by certain cases (accusative, dative, genitive, instrumental, etc.).
Languages vary significantly with respect to these criteria. The first criterion identifies objects reliably most of the time in English, e.g.
Fred gave me a book.
a. A book was given (to) me.—Passive sentence identifies a book as an object in the starting sentence.
b. I was given a book.—Passive sentence identifies me as an object in the starting sentence.
The second criterion is also a reliable criterion for analytic languages such as English, since the relatively strict word order of English usually positions the object after the verb(s) in declarative sentences. The third criterion is less applicable to English, though, since English lacks morphological case, exceptions being the personal pronouns (I/me, we/us, he/him, she/her, they/them). For languages that have case and relatively freer word order, morphological case is the most readily available criterion for identifying objects. In Latin and related languages, direct objects are usually marked with the accusative case, and indirect objects with the dative case. However, object marking may also follow non-syntactic rules, such as animacy. In Spanish, for example, human objects have to be marked by the preposition a (as an example of differential object marking).
Verbs can be classified according to the number and/or type of objects that they do or do not take. The following table provides an overview of some of the various verb classes:^[10]