Grammatical relations

Defining the grammatical relations

Most grammarians and students of language intuitively know in most cases what the subject and object in a given clause are. But when one attempts to produce theoretically satisfying definitions of these notions, the results are usually less clear and therefore controversial. The contradictory impulses have resulted in a situation where most theories of grammar acknowledge the grammatical relations and rely on them heavily for describing phenomena of grammar but at the same time, avoid providing concrete definitions of them. Nevertheless, various principles can be acknowledged that attempts to define the grammatical relations are based on.