Question

What is the simplest subject in these sentences?
At age thirteen, Marshall Taylor won his first amateur bicycle race.
During those years, international and American championship titles were awarded to Taylor.

Answer 1

Hint:
i) A single subject is connected to a verb by a single noun or pronoun. Normally, before a verb comes the simple subject of a sentence.
ii) The complete subject can include modifiers (adjectives, relative clauses and prepositional phrases), but only one, unmodified person, location, item or concept is included in the simple subject. For example: Cats are good pets.Here Cats is the simplest subject.

Complete answer:
Whenever you reach the simple subject, any propositional sentences can be crossed to simplify the process. Phrases that change and modify a verb or noun are prepositional phrases.

The first sentence is “At age thirteen, Marshall Taylor won his first amateur bicycle race." The only preposition phrase in this sentence is "At age thirteen" . Therefore, to make it simpler, remove the prepositional phrase from it.

The sentence we are left with is "Marshall Taylor won his first amateur bicycle race."
Simple subjects are the person, location, object, or concept that the sentence is about. Here, Marshall Taylor is the subject. You'd start at the beginning of the sentence and finish the last word before the verb, if you looked for the complete subject.

Another sentence is "During those years, international and American championship titles were awarded to Taylor." Take out the prepositional phrases. So we removed "During those years" and "to Taylor".
Hence, our sentence is "International and American championship titles were awarded." "International" and "American" are both modifications of adjectives using an adverb, "championship", so they can't be the simple subject. "Were" is the verb, and the subject has to be before the verb.

Therefore, the simple subject in this sentence is, "titles".

Note:
i) A sentence has a major subject, that is the subject of the main verb. A sentence can, however, contain other subjects that are subject to other verbs.
ii) The compromise with the subject-verb implies to settle on the subject using the correct form of the verb. At least one basic subject is used in each complete sentence.