Sometime ago a Russian who writes well in English joined Jose Carillo’s English Forum and, for starters, asked me to clarify a puzzling peculiarity of English grammatical objects.
Ivan Ivanov—that was his username—was sure that in “She gave me the report,” the pronoun “me” is the indirect object while the noun “report” is the direct object. But then he wondered what kind of object “me” is in “She gave it to me” and “She did it for me.” He asked: “Can we call it a prepositional object or, if that’s a wrong term, would it be better to say that ‘to me’ and ‘for me’ are just prepositional phrases?”
I suggested that we do a quick review of the three kinds of English objects first to clearly see how each of them works.
To begin with, an object is a noun or pronoun that denotes the goal or result of the verb’s action. It is of three kinds: direct object, indirect object, and object of the preposition.
A direct object receives the verb’s action or shows the result of that action. In “The mechanic fixed the car,” for example, the noun “car” is the direct object because it’s the entity acted upon by the verb “fixed.”
An indirect object receives the direct object of the verb. It’s the secondary goal of the verb’s action—an intermediary or “pass-on” receiver. In “Alex gave me a ride,” “me” is an indirect object because it’s only a “pass-on” receiver of the noun “ride,” which is the direct object.
An object of the preposition is a noun or pronoun introduced by a preposition to complete the meaning of a phrase that modifies a sentence. This modifying phrase is what’s known as a prepositional phrase. For example, in “The unsavory revelations against the politician placed his integrity under a cloud of doubt,” the noun phrase “a cloud of doubt” is the object of the preposition “under.”
VERB WITH DIRECT OBJECT AND INDIRECT OBJECT
VERB WITH OBJECT OF THE PREPOSITION
VERB WITH DIRECT OBJECT, MODIFYING PREPOSITIONAL PHRASE,
INDIRECT OBJECT, AND OBJECT OF THE PREPOSITION
Now let’s figure out why Ivan found it tough to categorize the objects in these sentences that he presented at the outset: “She gave it to me.” “She did it for me.”
Their syntax looks pretty normal. The pronoun “it” as direct object comes right after the verb “gave” and “did,” respectively, while the pronoun “me” as indirect object takes the tail end.
However, an unusual thing happens when the direct object isn’t “it” but a noun like, say, “laptop” or “favor.” In “She gave me the laptop” and “She did me a favor,” for instance, “me” has moved from the tail end to a position right after the verb. This question then comes to mind: Did “me” change status from indirect object to direct object in the process?
Then something even more unusual happens when “laptop” and “favor” are reverted to the pronoun “it,” their original form. This produces these awkward, bad-sounding, and fuzzy constructions: “She gave me it.” “She did me it.” Clearly, a sentence becomes dysfunctional when it lumps the verb with a direct object and indirect object that are both pronouns, for it seriously blurs the distinction between direct object and indirect object.
English avoids such unsightly collocations with this expedient: positioning the direct object “it” right after the verb and moving the indirect object “me” to the tail end. There, “me” becomes what Ivan correctly called a prepositional object.
In the process, the first sentence that baffled him becomes the clearer, better-sounding “She gave it to me,” where “me” is now the object of the preposition “to”; the second sentence becomes “She did it for me,” where “me” is now the object of the preposition “for.” In both constructions, however, “me” retains its function as the verb’s indirect object.
This is one neat way English fixes the syntax of objects that become awkward bedfellows.
This essay, 1034th in the series, first appeared in the weekly column “English Plain and Simple” by Jose A. Carillo in the Education Section of the March 23, 2017 issue (print edition only) of The Manila Times
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