The Nominative or Subject Case: A Six Pack is more than you think!

When I taught my 6th grade English class all about Pronouns, I would bring in an empty six pack container from the grocery store. They always laughed, but it was a good discussion starter: How did early humans share information with each other? How did they make sure that they were not misinterpreted? If I wanted to tell you that a prehistoric dog bit a prehistoric man, how would I say that in order to make myself understood? 

In English, we put the subject of the sentence first. Why? Why are our words ordered in a certain way in a sentence? And why do we have different words for different people in a sentence? Drawing a birds-eye view of six pack on the board, we start with "I" as the person speaking. We write that in the upper left hand box. To whom am I directly speaking? "You." That fills in the box directly below. What if others are listening or we are talking about someone or something else who is not part of the conversation?  "He," "She," "It" are written in the third box down. 

But what if you and I are working together together? "We" 
To share directly with a group of people? "You (plural)" (In northern Ohio, we say "you guys"---and that can lead to a whole other discussion about dialects...)
Where many others are also listening or the subject of conversation. "They"

And now we have our first six pack filled: Subject Pronouns. These are the pronouns we use as the subject or predicate nominative in a sentence. Those words typically come first in a sentence. And this concept came down to us from the Latin language.

Next post: "Mmmmm" means more than good food.