Not quite a filler

This is really a note to self - not sure if I've made this point before, but i want to lodge an objection to the subject, or at least the idea that all sentences necessarily have a subject (as per the LFG crowd), or that subjects are necessarily agents (Baker) (assuming causation is at stake), or that the subject is a "grammaticised topic" (also LFG). my intuition is that these are all very eurocentric, possibly latincentric.

I'll follow that up when I get back to a library, but I haven't seen remotely testable evidence for any of this. I also find the failure of anyone to produce a principled account of the operation of the subject in Chinese - which however clumsily has nonetheless been plausibly challenged by Lee.