Form and position of the indirect recipient objects

As to their form and position the following cases must be distinguished:

1. If the indirect recipient object is attached to a verb of inducement, it is always non-prepositional and has a fixed position in the sentence just before the direct object.

Mother orderedme to get down.

He urgedher to write a story about it.

2. If it is attached to the verbs of benefaction to announce, to ascribe, to attribute, to communicate, to contribute, to dedicate, to dictate, to disclose, to explain, to interpret, to introduce, to open, to point out, to repeat, to submit, to suggest, it is always prepositional and has two possible positions in the sentence, either before the direct object or after it. In both cases it is governed by the preposition to. It usually precedes the direct object if the latter is modified by an attribute.

He dictated the letterto his secretary.

Up to her death in 1935 she did not opento me her secret.

Then she explainedto me the cause of her refusal.

3. If the indirect recipient object is attached to a verb of benefaction other than those listed above, its form and position vary according to certain rules:

a) The indirect recipient object is non-prepositional when it precedes the direct object.

She offeredhim a sandwich. Jane sangme a song.

b) The indirect recipient object is prepositional when it follows the direct object. In this case the most frequent preposition is to.

She has given some kind of task to each girl. I’m going to offer something to you.

If the indirect recipient object denotes a person for whose benefit the action is done, it has the preposition for.

I’ll buy thisfor you.

с) The position of the indirect recipient object after the direct object is sometimes obligatory. This is the case either when both objects are personal pronouns, as in:

Give him to me. Send me to them.

or when the direct object is a personal pronoun, while the indirect object is a noun, as in

Give them to Nanny. Show it to John.

If the direct object is the pronoun it and the indirect recipient object is any other personal pronoun, the indirect recipient object may take the preposition or not.

Give it to him = Give it him.

The latter is more colloquial.

Sometimes the indirect recipient object may be placed before the predicate verb. This occurs in the following cases:

1. In pronominal questions referring to the indirect recipient object or its attribute.

Whom did you show the brooch to?

Which boy has she given the money to?

2. In attributive clauses.

This friend of his whom she had shown the letter to did not appear to know anything.

3. If the object is to be made more emphatic for the sake of contrast.

To you he’s telling his tales, not to me.

The indirect non-recipient object

The indirect non-recipient object is a prepositional object that follows both transitive and intransitive verbs and completes their meaning, The indirect non-recipient object may be preceded by various prepositions.

I thought about it a good deal. Invention arises from idleness.

How would you deal with the problem? I could hardly stand on my skates then.

The formal object it

Some verbs cannot take an infinitive object or a clausal object. In this case the formal objectit precedes the notional object. It is called introductory (or anticipatory)it. The sentence thus has two objects, the formal object it and a notional object, which is an infinitive or a clause. The formal object it may be either a direct object, or an indirect non-recipient object.

1. As a direct object it occurs after the verbs to take, to like, to find, to understand, to learn and some others.

I understandit that you are my wife’s brother. We foundit difficult to talk to him.

2. As an indirect non-recipient object it occurs after certain verbs which take objects with obligatory prepositions: to count (on), to depend (on), to hear (of), to insist (on), to object (to) and some others.

He objected toit that they should be taken to the island too.

There is another use ofit as о formal object: it can be attached to transitive or intransitive verbs to convey a very vague idea of some kind of an object.

I was angry. I made him take the present away. An hour later he returned and we madeit up.

The cognate object

The verbs that most frequently take a cognate object are: to live (a life), to smile (a smile), to laugh (a laugh), to die (a death), to sigh (a sigh), to sleep (a sleep), to dream (a dream), to run (a race), to fight (a, fight, a battle).

He died the death of a hero. Here she stopped and sighed a heavy sigh.

One must live one's own life, you know.

The cognate object is always used with words modifying it, never alone: the death of a hero, a heavy sigh, one’s own life, etc.

Semantically cognate objects characterize the action expressed by the predicate-verb. Nevertheless they are considered to be objects, not adverbial modifiers, because:

a) they are expressed by nouns without prepositions, which is not characteristic of adverbials; b) they may occur in the position of the subject of a passiveconstruction.

He never doubted that life should be lived as he lived.

Objects to adjectives

There are quite a number of adjectives that can take an object, although not quite in the same way as verbs do. In the sentence these adjectives are mainly used as predicatives. The objects they take are of two kinds:

1. Direct objects expressed only by infinitives or infinitive phrases. No noun or pronoun is ever possible in this position.

Mack was very glad to get home. Mary was happy to have met us.

2. Indirect non-recipient objects governed by various prepositions. These objects are usually expressed by a noun or pronoun, sometimes by a gerund, a gerundial phrase or complex, or by a clause, depending on the combinability of the adjective.

Now she was ready for anything. I was surprised at her being so shy.

Objects to statives

The statives that can take objects are few in number. The most frequent of them are: afraid, aware, alive, ashamed, ahead, akin. Their objects may be direct infinitive or clausal objects, or an indirect non-recipient object. The latter may be expressed by a noun (pronoun), a gerund, a gerundial phrase or predicative complex,or a clause.

She had never been afraid to experiment.

I think he was afraid I shouldn’t rememberhim.

I was afraid of you, my pretty. He was fully aware of what he was doing.

Objects to adverbs

There are some adverbs which can take objects, but these can only be indirect non-recipient objects.

Fortunately for himself, he could not be present.

THE ATTRIBUTE

The attribute is a secondary part of the sentence which characterizes a person or non-person expressed by the headword either qualitatively, quantitatively, or from the point of view of situation. Attributes may refer to nouns and other words of nominal nature, such as pronouns, gerunds and substitute words, as in:

It was a letter from his devoted friend. One day I put the picture up again, the lifesize one.

An attribute forms a nominal phrase with its headword.