What Does tacit subject Mean
The concept of subject is often used to name the individual who, in a certain context, has no name or identification. In addition, the term refers to a grammatical function and a category in the field of philosophy.
Tacitus , for its part, is an adjective that refers to what is not pronounced directly or formally, but can be inferred or assumed. The notion, on the other hand, is linked to what is silent.
The idea of the tacit subject belongs to the field of grammar . Sentences that lack an identifiable noun or pronoun have an unspoken subject, also defined as an omitted subject or an elliptical subject . In these cases, the subject is not explicit, but is inferred by means of reference.
In this class of sentences , therefore, the subject is constructed elliptically, since there are no phonetic elements that allow it to be defined in the sentence itself.
For example: "We listen to music . " In this case, "music" is a noun , although it does not act as a subject since it is not modified if the person or number of the verb changes ( "listen" , in the infinitive). The subject, in this sentence, is tacit and can be inferred from the way the verb appears. As “listen” is conjugated in the first person plural, the subject must also be mentioned in the first person plural: “we” . In this way, the complete sentence (that is, including an explicit subject) would be the following: "(We) listen to music . " "We" , then, is tacitly included.
The tacit subject is something very typical of our language, which is why we use it completely naturally, without being aware that it is not possible in many other languages. It is not necessary to reach oriental or rare languages, since English is not compatible with the omission of the subject, at least not at the level that we do in Spanish.
In the field of language, it is never advisable to generalize or speak in a strict way: evolution and everyday speech always make many characteristics considered vulgar or incorrect to creep into the pages of " accepted grammar " little by little . Although at school we are not taught to speak English by omitting the subject, in real life, in "the street", the situation is very different: they prepare us to say "It sounds good" (which can be translated as "I think it's fine "), But we end up with " Sounds good " (note that the subject, it , is omitted in the second example.
We see that English accepts the omission of the subject in some cases, especially in informal speech, but this does not mean that in most cases it is necessary to make the subject explicit; in fact, in English it is mandatory to mention it so many times that literal translations into our language are often redundant and incorrect. The unspoken subject is something that we can - and should - use in formal speech, as it helps us avoid unnecessary repetition of pronouns , with a consequent increase in the clarity of communication.
As well as dequeísmo, queísmo and verb conjugation errors that lead some Spanish speakers to place an 's' at the end of the second person singular in the past tense («you said s «, instead of «you said », For example), not using the unspoken subject in the recommended cases is a very common mistake and dirties the speech .
An example of this error can be the following sentence: "She told me she would come, and when I asked her if it was okay for me to invite Esteban, she told me that she did not want to see him . " In this case, it was enough to mention the pronoun "she" at the beginning of the sentence, since in the other two propositions it can be deduced perfectly.