What is a grammatical relation?

Definition
	A grammatical relation is a role of a noun phrase or complement clause that determines syntactic behaviors such as the following:
	Word position in a clause Verb agreement Participation and behavior in such operations as passivization

Kinds
	Here are some kinds of grammatical relations:
	What is an object? What is a subject?

Generic
	A grammatical relation is a kind of
	What is a syntactic function?

See also
	Comparison of semantic role and grammatical relation

Sources
	Comrie 1989 65–66
	Andrews, A. 1985 66

Context for this page:

Concept module: grammatical relation
In overview module: Glossary (Linguistics): G
In modular book: Glossary of linguistic terms, by Eugene E. Loos (general editor), Susan Anderson (editor), Dwight H., Day, Jr. (editor), Paul C. Jordan (editor), and J. Douglas Wingate (editor)
In bookshelf: Linguistics

This page is an extract from the LinguaLinks Library, Version 5.0 published on CD-ROM by SIL International, 2003. [Ordering information.]

Page content last modified: 5 January 2004

© 2004 SIL International