By Articles, Direct objects

There are transitive verbs, intransitive ones, and there are verbs that are of both types. I play very well. Intransitive, because there is no object attached to the verb. I play football. football is the direct object of the verb, thus 'play' here is transitive. I like you. 'you' is the...

Briefly (and reasonably accurately), the direct object receives the action of the verb, while the indirect object receives the benefit of the action:I bought my wife a new can opener.I -- Subjectbought -- Verbmy wife -- Indirect object: I didn't buy my wife, I bought a can opener, but she...

Clive wrote:an actual eg from Wikipedia - In 1997, he presented at the "Naturalism, Theism, and the Scientific Enterprise" conference held by intelligent design advocates in Austin, Texas, giving a defense of methodological naturalism. In 2001, he presented opposite William A. Dembski at the...

What is the word sucks in "Homework sucks"? Is it a verb or an adjective? If it is a verb, what does homework suck?This brings up an excellent point, and a wonderful opportunity to discover the beautiful syntactic structure of the English language. The question at hand is "Does an English verb...

Right. I stopped parsing too soon.thing: direct object of giving backthe: definite article modifying thingvery: adjective, meaning precise, modifying thingHe desired: short for that He desired; an adjective clause modifying thing

I don’t know why it can’t therefore just as well be concluded that ‘out’, in such constructions, is simply an adverb. I don't know why either. Some authors do call these "particles" adverbs. However, the behavior of a "particle" is a sometimes a bit different from an adverb with regard to...

I need a few of the regulars out there to help me out again, could you please check what I've answered so far and tell me if I'm right? If I'm wrong please simply point me in the right direction and I'll try again. Unfortunately questions B and C have stumped me, so I'd be grateful if anyone...

http://pinker.wjh.harvard.edu/articles/media/1994_01_24_thenewrepublic.html Probably no "grammatical error" has received as much scorn as "misuse" of pronoun case inside conjunctions (phrases with two parts joined by is an object that requires object case, it does not mean that is an object...

All prepositional verbs take prepositional objects. True. But what do we do with ambi-structural "looked after"? They looked (DO) What evidence is there that speakers don't parse "look after" as a unit and "the sheep" as its direct object? It seems all too neat 'n tidy to lump verbs of...

My point was that "looked after" is a prepositional verb, not a phrasal verb as was suggested in the thread. I've been trying to understand the difference. It seems that many people are not aware that there is one. My error, I misunderstood. I know prepositional verbs as inseperable phrasal...