Can a prepositional phrase be a subject?

Question

Is a prepositional phrase acceptable as a subject ?

I got this grammar book yesterday, need not to mention its author Book title ( Whose grammar book is this anyway? ) On page 25 I found this: (words substituting a noun appears in bold). I'll also indicate what noun function the noun substitute is serving:

1. Prepositional phrase acting as the subject of the sentence.

• Under the table is the place to look.

I think it is the same with a sentence starts by (here or there) and neither here or there is a subject but the noun which follows.

Answer 1

Under the table is the place to look.

Yes: the PP "under the table" is the subject here.

This can be demonstrated by the possibility of having an interrogative tag, "isn't it?", where "it" is anaphoric to "under the table" , showing that the latter is subject.

The basic interrogative test for subjects also proves it's the subject: "Is under the table the place to look?"

Edit, as requested in comments:

There is no subject-dependent inversion here, as there would be in, say, On her desk was a bowl of fruit, where the PP on her desk is not the subject but a preposed locative complement.

Answer 2

For me, that is an inversion, which is great English, by the way.

It is an inversion of the usual order used for effect. The place to look is under the table.

With the bare form of be, it's easy, usually.

For me, the subject is the phrase The place to look and under the table is just a prepositional phrase, an adjunct of location. And this is basically a locative inversion. "Up the river swam the salmon". instead of: "The salmon swam up the river."

English inverts many things, all the time. It is a major poetic device.

Shakespeare: Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown. for The head lies uneasy that wears the crown.

For me, these sentences require being put in a natural order in order to find the subject or predicate.

If English didn't invert the the verb and subject, there would no such thing as inversion.

Here is the wikipedia page that can get you started on inversion:

subject-verb inversion in English

Answer 3

I see it is mentioned in two sites that a preposition phrase can be a noun, so in case its function = noun it can be either subject or complement, though it seems odd to many learners >> Here are results from two sites but no any results from books except one book which I found on Google books 1- from : https://www.grammarly.com/blog/prepositional-phrase/ Prepositional Phrases Acting as Nouns

Less frequently, prepositional phrases can function like nouns in a sentence.

During the national anthem is the worst time to blow your nose.

After the game will be too late for us to go to dinner. 2- From : https://www.englishgrammar101.com/module-7/prepositions/lesson-6/prepositional-phrases-as-nouns
In front of the class is a stressful place to be. (subject) The most stressful place for me is in front of the class. (subject complement)

In these cases, there is usually a noun in front of the prepositional phrase that is implied or understood, but not written.

(The spot) in front of the class is a stressful place to be.
The most stressful place for me is (the spot) in front of the class.    But the matter is still confusing with a subject -Verb agreement Suppose the noun which comes after the prepositional phrase = **plural**  

Under the table are the places to look. Do we use a singular verb in such instance ? Lastly I refuse the information under the the links above

Answer 4

There are two questions at hand. One is whether any prepositional phrase appears as a subject in any coherent clause. Another is whether the given example counts as a subjective prepositional phrase, as the textbook suggests it does.

Regarding the latter, context and intent are relevant, but they're not supplied.

We have a copular clause. English copular clauses allow subject/complement inversion: Both "the meek are blessed" and "blessèd are the meek" treat "the meek" as the subject. We can't determine what counts as the subject from the word position alone.

That's how context and intent are relevant.

A subject complement is either another reference to the subject's referent or it is a licensed attribution of the subject. The typical examples of those are called predicate nouns and predicate adjectives respectively.

When one constituent is an obvious attribution, the other must be the subject. There's no grammatical ambiguity in "blessèd are the meek".

When the complement is a substantive reference, there is an ambiguity.

You have options. You could parse "under the table" as "[the area] under the table", and claim that the subject is elliptical. You could treat "under the table" as a substantive prepositional phrase in parallel with substantive adjectives, although that might be a distinction without a difference. Alternately, you could parse "under the table" as the attribute and the topic, leaving "the place to look" as the referential subject.

Under the table is fine.

Here, we can't find any substantive reference other than "[the area] under the table". We don't have the option of regarding "under the table" as an attribution of the adjective "fine".

The textbook's example isn't a good example. It's ambiguous. Without some clearly clarifying context, we can't identify which constituent is the subject. Either could be.

However, we can find sentences that don't have any other candidate for the subject role except for some prepositional phrase (or, at least, an elliptical reference that such a phrase suggests and modifies).

Whether it is or merely indicates a subject might be a hair-splitting philosophical distinction. Sometimes a prepositional phrase is the only constituent that even comes close to filling one of those possibilities.