"Good evening."
"To you, as well. Did we shave?"
"What? Oh, you mean the gauze. Or lack of it. Well, no, but my nose has healed considerably. Nice to breathe again through that left nostril. Haven't used it for forty-two years."
"That must be a strange sensation."
"It's quite liberating, actually."
"I'll bet."
"You'd win, so I'm not laying odds. Anyway, when we last were having our discussion, you asked a critical question."
"I did?"
"That wasn't it."
"Oh, right. I remember now."
"Will you reask it?"
"Surely. I asked, 'How do we know when a noun is acting as a subject or a direct object?' "
"Have you thought about it since then?"
"No, that wasn't the question I asked. I remember clearly."
"No, I mean, have you thought about an answer to your question which you just right now brought our attention back to."
"Oh. Well, yes."
"And you have an answer?"
"I said I thought about an answer. I didn't say I had one."
"Shall we conjure up that sentence which gave rise to your question?"
"Good idea."
"Our sentence was, 'Cows eat...'"
"'grass'!"
"Right. Did we decide anything about the function of 'Cows' in the sentence?"
"Yes, that it was a noun acting as the subject, i.e., the doer of the action."
"Right. Did we decide anything else?"
"We determined that 'eat' was the verb, i.e., the action that the subject, 'Cows', was performing."
"Okay. And?"
"And that 'grass' was the direct object of the verb 'eat' because it was what the 'cow', the subject, was eating."
"Let me ask you if you would agree to the following as a summing up of what we discussed last time:
1. Nouns are things (or persons or places)
2. Nouns can act as subjects, i.e., doers of the action of the verb
3. Nouns can act as Direct Objects (i.e., direct receivers of the
action of the verb)
4. Verbs are action words, i.e., words that denote action performed
by Nouns acting as subjects on nouns acting as direct objects.
Anything else?"
"No, that's about it."
"Okay. So your question then was, in a nutshell: How To Decide?"
"How to decide what?"
"Well, if a noun can act either as a subject of a verb, or a direct object of a verb, how do you know when you see a noun how it's acting?"
"I need some help here."
"Okay, let's bring back our sentence."
"Let's."
" 'Cows eat grass.' "
"So much is clear."
"How many nouns?"
"Two."
"Subject?"
" 'Cows'."
"Direct Object?"
" 'grass'."
"Verb?"
" 'eat' ."
"Where is the subject placed?"
"At the beginning of the sentence?"
"Yes, but let's be even more specific."
"Okay. Directly in front of the verb."
"Correct. How about the direct object?"
"That's directly after the verb."
"Correct. Do you know the answer to your question yet?"
"Sort of...."
"Take our sentence again."
" 'Cows eat grass.' "
"Switch 'Cows' and 'grass'."
" 'Grass eats Cows.' "
"Do those two sentences mean the same thing?"
"Don't they?"
"Look at them closely:
'Cows eat grass'
'Grass eats Cows'
Are they the same?"
"Well, no."
"What did I change?"
"The placement of 'grass' and 'cows'."
"What happened?"
" 'grass' became the subject; 'cows' became the direct object."
"What happened to the placement of the verb?"
"Nothing. It stayed the same."
"So what are we saying about where words appear in a sentence?"
"That it means a lot."
"It actually means everything. Where a word falls in a sentence determines its function in the sentence, and therefore, the force of that sentence."
"Could you summarize?"
"Absolutely. Word order tells you word function. An English sentence is completely dependent upon its word order to establish meaning."
"Are you sure?"
"Let me rephrase. 'Cows grass eat.' "
"What does that mean?"
"Exactly."