Search results for 'tag:English grammar tag:Direct objects' matching tags 'English grammar' and 'Direct objects'

Re: I am living here now for three years now

CalifJim — Sun, 09 Mar 2008 19:17:30 GMT

Anonymous
how do I explain why

??? It's correct because it follows the rules of English grammar! I don't understand what you have in mind here.

Anonymous
show subject+??+??

Also a bit unclear. I is the subject. have lived is the verb. The rest is adverbial.

Anonymous
The same applies to ...

The same answers also apply. you is the subject. are doing is the verb. what is the direct object. The rest is adverbial.

Re: Identify the functions of verbs in the sentence

Avangi — Sun, 06 Jan 2008 18:18:26 GMT

Anonymous wrote:

Identify the functions of verbs in the sentence below by labelling them Vt (transitive), Vi (intransitive), Vd (dative), Vf (factitive), Vc (copulative) & Vs (sense)

Q1: He was last seen (vs) being given a large amount of money outside a bank.

Q2: In the late nineteenth century, Chinese secret societies became (vc) obessive about the possession of silver to such an extent that voilence often flared up among them.

Q3: Since the first astronaut landed (vi) on the moon, mankind has explored (vt) the idea of travelling to Mars.

Q4: The crowd was (vc) getting larger and more agitated when, at last, the police happened (vi)

Q5: Since he was (vc) always reliable and systematic, the committee unanimously voted (vf) Mike Treasurer.

I have tried to underline the main verb for each sentence but not sure whether I'm on the right track. Please enlighten.

Many thanks in advance.

Hi Anon, "Please enlighten." Too much light??

I think these terms have been invented by the ESL community and are a little tough for "native speakers" who are not trained ESL teachers. There's some overlap and ambiguity.

Transitive and intransitive are of course basic native English grammar school material. Every verb is one or the other, and often both, but not at the same time.

Q1: [to see] (Vt) - passive voice (vs would be You look funny.) [I may get clobbered on this.]

Q2: [to become] okay (links to predicate adjective obsessive)

Q3: [to land] okay (no object) [to explore] okay (direct object=idea)

Q4: [to get - in the intransitive sense of to become] okay (links to adjectival phrase larger and more agitated) [why not underline both parts as you did in Q1: ?] [to happen] okay

Q5: [to be] okay (links to adjectival phrase [always] reliable and systematic) [to vote] okay (two direct objects)

Regards, - A.

Re: Which way would you sway?

MrPedantic — Fri, 25 May 2007 00:08:15 GMT

Milky wrote:

<I would be interested to see quotations from the early English grammarians that presented spoken English as somehow inferior, or that demonstrated an imposition of inappropriate rules from Latin. >

Do you doubt that was the case?

"Doubt" is too strong a word. I would be interested to see the quotations.

If so, I guess you disagree with this:

"If they have studied "English Grammar", this is probably an encumbrance which they might well put aside for the present, since it is based on a more or less imitative recapitulation of Classical Latin Grammar, which is totally non-applicable to the English language as it now stands.

I would disagree that Classical Latin Grammar is "totally non-applicable" to the English language (or vice versa). It would be truer to say that many aspects of Latin grammar are non-applicable to English.

I would also disagree with the notion that the study of English grammar for any given person is bound to have been based on Latin grammar; though no doubt the statement is true for some people.

[Lowth] condemned "forcing the English under the rules of a foreign Language"¹).

Sounds sensible.

His most famous (or infamous) contribution to the study of grammar was his prescription that sentences ending with a prepositionâsuch as "what did you ask for?"âare inappropriate in formal writing.

Sounds doubtful. Though Lowth doesn't appear to mention Latin in his reasoning:

"This is an Idiom which our language is strongly inclined to; it prevails in common conversation, and suits very well with the familiar style in writing; but the placing of the Preposition before the Relative is more graceful, as well as more perspicuous; and agrees much better with the solemn and elevated Style."

And he seems to limit his prescription to the "solemn and elevated Style", which is a relatively rare form of English.

Thus Lowth condemns Addison's sentence "Who should I meet the other night, but my old friend?" on the grounds that the thing acted upon should be in the "Objective Case" (corresponding, as he says earlier, to an oblique case in Latin), rather than taking this example and others as evidence from noted writers that "who" can refer to direct objects.

I would not agree with Lowth about Addison's sentence; but nothing here suggests that his justification lay in Latin grammar.

"Objective case" doesn't seem a particularly pernicious phrase; "whom" is undeniably an example; and what remains of the objective case in English "corresponds" in some of its functions to the accusative case in Latin.

I know that some popular sources repeat the notion that early English grammarians attempted to impose Latin grammar on English; but I've yet to see any primary evidence.

MrP

Re: Which way would you sway?

milky — Thu, 24 May 2007 23:11:27 GMT

Do you doubt that was the case?

If so, I guess you disagree with this:

Lest this seem an arbitrary statement, let me note that English has no "Cases" of the noun, in fact is survives with nothing at all like the five Latin Cases. The English Verb does not match the six "Tenses" of the Latin verb at all, and the insistence on Person in English verbs, as compared to Latin, is virtually without meaning. The constant iteration of the word "Subjunctive" in English grammars is a weak and misleading term since the inherited subjunctive disappeared from the language centuries ago. "

http://community.middlebury.edu/~harris/EngLatGrammar.html

Lowth's method included criticising "false syntax"; his examples of false syntax were culled from Shakespeare, the King James Bible, John Donne, John Milton, Jonathan Swift, Alexander Pope, and other famous writers, raising the question, by what authority did Lowth aspire to judge these writers' syntax? His approach was based largely on Latin grammar, and a number of his judgments were arrived at by applying Latin grammar to English, a misapplication according to critics of a later generation (and his own stated principles; he condemned "forcing the English under the rules of a foreign Language"¹). Thus Lowth condemns Addison's sentence "Who should I meet the other night, but my old friend?" on the grounds that the thing acted upon should be in the "Objective Case" (corresponding, as he says earlier, to an oblique case in Latin), rather than taking this example and others as evidence from noted writers that "who" can refer to direct objects.

http://www.answers.com/topic/robert-lowth

Lowth said that even though the use of a preposition to end a sentence was suited to the familiar style of writing, it was much less graceful and perspicuous than placing the preposition before the relative. I'd say there's an implication of inferiority there, wouldn't you?

Help with nominative-accusative case.

M. Caliban — Thu, 28 Dec 2006 13:59:05 GMT

Although I'm a native English speaker, I've often struggled to understand English grammar, especially its morphosyntatical elements. I've done some reading on nominative-accusative as well as ergative-absolutive cases and I just don't get it.

Can someone who's better at linguistics explain this to me?

I understand that a sentence has a Subject, a Verb, and an Object. (John sees fish) I understand that a verb can be transitive, in that it demands both subject and object, or intransitive, in that it won't accept an object.

For example, 'to see' is transitive in that John (the subject) has to see something (the direct object), he can't 'just see.' On the other hand, 'to sleep' is intransitive in that John can 'just sleep' but he can't sleep a direct object.

1a: John sees fish.

1b: John sees.

2a: John sleeps fish

2b: John sleeps.

Therefore, 1a and 2b are right. 2a is never right and 1b is only right if you want to interpret it as actually saying, "John does see."

As I understand it, nominative-accusative case is when a language 'marks' the direct object of a transitive verb. So, if my mark was '-do' then I could say:

1. John sees fish.

2. John fish-do sees.

3. Fish-do sees John.

4. Sees fish-do John.

And all of them would mean the same thing. Word order doesn't matter now as no matter where I scatter the word fish the -do tells me what its function in the sentence is.

My problem (took me long enough, didn't it?) is that English is described as having a vestigial normative-accusative case in its use of pronouns and passive voice but I don't see it. Can someone explain how normative-accusative applies to the English language?

Re: Writing a sentence with an Indirect Object.

Clive — Sun, 12 Nov 2006 16:39:16 GMT

Hi,

I need to write a sentence in the following pattern, and I don't see how it's possible.

The pattern is: adjective + direct object + helping verb + subject + verb

No articles allowed?

So, something like 'Great strength did he use'. This kind of odd word order seems very literary or poetical. This doesn't seem like a typical every-day English grammar exercise.

If you can add other parts of speech, you could look at normal questions, eg Which red sweater did she buy?

(As regards your thread title, this is not really an exercise that deals with indirect objects)

Best wishes, Clive

Sentence pattern

Anonymous — Sat, 05 Aug 2006 21:13:45 GMT

From English grammar books, we learn that there are 6 types of basic sentence patterns around which you can expand to add more meaning. One of the patterns involves using a transitive verb with a direct object and an indirect object, both of which are nouns. In another pattern, the indirect object is followed by an object complement, which is an adjective. Now I would like to know what function the words that come after the indirect object in the following sentences have:

I saw him run.
I saw him running.
He heard him cry.
He heard him crying.
He heard him whisper.

I know that participles function as adjectives. In my examples, the complements: running, cry, crying and whisper are not participles. They are verbs, but they provide more information about the state of the object: 'him'. So are the complements in these examples verbs or adjectives? I would appreciate it if someone would help me clear my confusion.

Thanks.

Carol Chan

V + I.O + D.O

Big A Deal — Mon, 17 Jul 2006 17:34:48 GMT

I have a english grammar book on verbs usage.

I got a question when I read about S+V+I.O+D.O

In that book, S+V+I.O+D.O is regarded as meaning that the subject have virtually an impact on the direct object,

So I just can't say " I threw him a baseball ,but he did'nt got it."

The first sentence "I threw him a baseball" contrasts with the second "he did'nt got it "

because the first means "I threw a ball to him and he got the ball."

It should be changed "I threw a baseball to him ,but he didn't got it"

but as far as i know , we can use it to express 'old information' and 'new information'

======

A : What did you give him?

B : I gave him (a pretty doll) new information.

A: Who did you give the doll that I bought for you?

B: I gave the doll to (my girl friend, Jina.)new information.

======

and I studied that there is not difference between S V I.O D.O and S V D.O to I.O in meaning.

Which one is correct?

Re: The Indirect and Prepositional Objects

Ruslana — Sat, 14 Jan 2006 18:19:29 GMT

Hello, Mister Micawber!

Thus, A, C, D are not correct. But I have one more question. Are these acceptable?

I. Explain to me this rule.
II. He read to her the letter.
III. They will deliver to our agents the goods at the end of the week.
IV. The buyers submitted to the sellers a letter of guarantee.

Is the use of the prepositional object after the direct object binding?

If it is, does the next sentense sound fine?

Explain the rule you had to read in your English Grammar book the day before yesterday to me.

Maybe it is easier to say, "Explain to me the rule you had to read in your English Grammar book the day before yesterday", isn't it?

Re: the dog bit the boy?

khoff — Thu, 15 Dec 2005 17:32:43 GMT

Paco -- I'm not sure you can always say that the first of two objects is automatically the indirect object. What if you said "I told the story to the man in the long white coat"? "The story" is still the direct object, even though it now precedes the indirect object. "The man in the long white coat" is the indirect object.

I'm also not sure that in "I told him so" "him" is now a direct object. I am not nearly as expert in English grammar rules as you are, so I hesitate to contradict you - but my intuition tells me that the direct object of the verb "tell" answers the question "tell what?", while the indirect object answers the question "tell to whom?" I would say that in the sentence "I told him," "him" is the indirect object and the direct object is an unstated "it." Is that possible?