(A) What is the matter with you?

What is the subject of (A)?

What?
or the matter?

Thanks.

What is the subject of (A)?

Realizing that this will be of no help whatsoever, the subject is what.

Subject: Re: the subject of what

Realizing that this will be of no help whatsoever, the subject is what. -faldage

What? Whatness is not a subject?

(A) What is the matter with you?
What is the subject of (A)?

The subject is matter.
What is one of those hard-to-classify words that introduce questions. Grammarians tend to call them interrogative pronouns. It's usual in a question to find the subject after the verb. (Middle-school English teachers love this stuff. No one else much cares.)

Psst, soojin, I'd go with slithy toves on this--He's a retired edugator.

Dear soojin: Rearrange the order of words:
The matter with you is what? Now the subject is obviously "matter".

OH, yes, that is what i always do when i am uncertain. I'v heard it called "re-casting". Recast the sentence, and sometimes you can get rid of, replace or clarify: a case, a word, or just make things clearer!

or "answer" the question.. "the matter with me is..." and now it become clearer.. Matter is the subject!

>or "answer" the question..

be careful with that! "contrariness is the matter with me."

http://home.mn.rr.com/wwftd/

Rearrange the order of words:
The matter with you is what? Now the subject is obviously "matter".

But you are presuming, dr. bill, that such rearrangement of the sentence does not alter (but merely makes more evident) the subject of the sentence. I suggest that that premise is faulty, and that the rearrangment changes the gramatical subject where the verb "is" is followed by a noun. Contrast for example:

Property is theft. with Theft is property.

"Property is theft. with Theft is property."
Dear Keiva: Forgive me, but I do not think the above construction is likely to be of any help to soojin.
You have taken an absurd statement, which in reverse order is still absurd. I expect better things from you than that. To tease me is OK, but to further confuse soojin is not.

Realizing that this will be of no help whatsoever, the subject is what.-faldage

Cantankerousness is the "what" that is the matter with me. -a paraphrase of the words of tsuwm

Dear soojin,

Every living fiber of my being wants to agree with the good Doc Bill, with Jackie, with Mr. Troves, and with the wonderful Missus of troy. They are nice people, almost like kinfolk, but on the matter of this subject their observations are about as useless as teats on a boar hog.

Instead I am forced to side with the likes of tsuwm and Mister Faldage.

When two entities are connected by "is", the subject of the sentence is indeterminable, and if one chooses, he chooses arbitrarily. "Is", you see, equals "equal". And no, Monica, it doesn't depend on what Bill meant by "is".

A) What is the matter with you?
B) What is the subject of (A)?

soojin,
Just remove the question mark, then (B) becomes the answer to (A) and "what" is also the answer to (B)

Interchanging the nouns around "is" is only a feel-good method to make you think that you have thought.

Forget "interrogative pronouns" unless you are taking a grammar test. Then forget them quickly after, if you are.

Good Luck.

He said to me, "What is the matter with you?"(direct narration)
¢¡He asked me what the matter with me was. (indirect narration)

Is it right?

(A)He asked me what the matter with me was. (indirect narration)

That works but a little better might be:
(B)He asked me what was the matter with me. (indirect narration)

Word order is pretty important in English but not so important that we can't mess with it a little. To me, (B) sounds a little better than (A).

dr. bill, surely you realize that I was not intending to tease you? My point is simply to question your implicit assumption that the grammatical subject of a sentence remains unchanged when the sentence is restructure as you have done.

Frankly, I believe that assumption is incorrect, and one could substitute any other example using "is" in the sense of "equivalency" -- but an example using the terms figuratively, rather than literally, is probably a bit more clear.

the subject is what.

Agreeing with faldage, but not finding anything on-line directly on point, I note the following:

Achilles is a lion. --- Who is a lion?
Achilles is the subject of the former sentence. http://www.dictionary.com/doctor/faq/l/linkingverb.html
Why should one think the subject somehow "shifts" in the latter sentence?

What is your phone number?
"your phone number" is the subject complement -- implying that it is not the subject.
http://www.uottawa.ca/academic/arts/writcent/hypergrammar/adjectve.html

The same site confirms that the "subject complement" is not the "subject": "A linking verb connects a subject to a subject complement which identifies or describes the subject"
http://www.uottawa.ca/academic/arts/writcent/hypergrammar/link.html#linking verb

Just heard from the ultimate arbiter in matters such as this and she says that the subject is what.

Just heard from the ultimate arbiter in matters such as this and she says that the subject is what.

What's on first?

Who's on second!

Ah, poor, poor, soojin. What a bunch of smart alecks we are on this board!

matter is the predicate nominative

Recasting is a wonderful tool to help parse a sentence. I would like to go back to my old construction, with this example:

Soojin is one of those posters who ask questions vs
Soojin is one of those posters who asks questions

Recast that, if you please: Of the posters who ask questions, soojin is one.

Who's gonna argue with that?

I don¡¯t know which is the subject, what or matter.
But He asked me what was the matter with me is natural for me.
Thank you very much.

Dear AnnaStrophic,

Don't confuse me, please.

I did not intend to confuse you, soojin. I was bringing up a discussion from another part of this forum, for other participants to see. This is a fairly common thing to do here at AWAD. My apologies.