compositionsubject

Compositionsubject is not a widely standardized term in mainstream linguistics, but it appears in some instructional or theoretical discussions as a way to emphasize the role of the grammatical subject in the compositional process that yields sentence meaning. The idea behind a composition-subject is to foreground how the subject’s referent and features contribute to the overall proposition together with the predicate.

In this framing, the composition-subject refers to the noun phrase that serves as the subject of a clause and participates directly in semantic composition. The subject typically provides information such as reference, number, and person, and in some languages may interact with case marking or mood. Through the principle of compositionality, the meaning of the sentence is built by combining the meaning of the subject with the meaning of the predicate.

The concept is closely related to but distinct from terms like grammatical subject, topic, or theme. While in many languages the grammatical subject aligns with the topic or agent role, this is not universal. The composition-subject focuses on its role as an input to semantic composition rather than on discourse function alone.

Examples such as "The cat sleeps" illustrate a composition-subject in action: the subject "The cat" contributes its referential content and grammatical properties to the proposition expressed by the predicate "sleeps." More broadly, discussions of composition-subjects may occur in analyses of agreement, binding, or cross-linguistic variation in how subjects participate in sentence meaning.

See also: compositionality, subject (linguistics), syntax, semantics.