Search results for 'tag:Word order tag:Direct objects' matching tags 'Word order' and 'Direct objects'

Re: Him killed I!

Huevos — Mon, 18 Aug 2008 19:32:13 GMT

Anonymous
Is that correct? it seems wrong

It's not wrong. Normally in English sentences are ordered "Subject (S), Verb (V), Indirect Object (IO), Direct Object (DO)" but can run OSV, and, where pronouns are used in substitution of either the subject or object (e.g. your sentence) there are no word order constraints so OVS is possible. That said, such a construction is pretty unusual and almost certainly would be limited to use in literature for effect.

Re: About the meaning of "where"

Velimir — Tue, 12 Feb 2008 22:11:58 GMT

I'll try to give some information on this as a non-professional.This is how it looks like in the serbian language,and I suppose,it is very similar in all other slavic languages and also the latin language.

For indicating a location the locative case of a noun is used.If the english language had similar declension of nouns then the nouns following the prepositions "in" and "at" would be in the locative case.The presence of the preceding preposition is obligatory when the noun is in the locative case.

But,if the verb indicates motion,or in plain english,if you are :
going to, flying to, traveling to..

like in the question given in the opening post,then the noun will be in the dative case.This case you can connect with the nouns following the preposition "to" although the preposition is not necessarily present.The word "dative" derives from latin "dare" which means "to give" and the usage is most obvious on the example of that verb:

I gave my girlfriend a flower.

If you translated this in serbian,"girlfriend" would be in the dative case.Indirect object is in the dative case.The direct object ("a flower") is in the accusative case.

"Cases play a major part in determining a noun's syntactic role in the sentence, so word order is not as important in Latin as it is in other languages, such as English. Because of noun cases, words can often be moved around in a sentence without significantly altering its meaning, though the emphasis will have altered" (from a Wikipedia article on the latin language)
Btw,changing nouns,adjectives,pronouns and numbers to different cases is pretty tough area of the language with more cases,and is often lifelong mistery for many natives,and I know that well.Luckily,english is not a case-sensitive language.

Best regards

Re: use of "seek" and "offer"

CalifJim — Sat, 30 Jun 2007 01:31:53 GMT

are sought = are looked for.

You look for an apartment or job. = You seek an apartment or job. (Not seek for.)

I would have said ... are sought with complete secrecy ....

It means
People [seek / look for] a great many processes depending on such research with complete secrecy ...
________

offering to the tenants offices and apartments that please them

This is the same as:
offering offices and apartments that please them to the tenants
Or:
offering the tenants offices and apartments that please them

It's unusual to use the to explicitly when the indirect object is placed first, but it goes somewhat unnoticed in a long complicated phrase like this. The mistake would be obvious in a short sentence like *He offered to us a drink. By the way, with the verb offer, the alternate word order He offered a drink to us is not used as much.

CJ

Re: What does seperating the subject from the verb mean?

Cool Breeze — Wed, 13 Jun 2007 14:56:48 GMT

I think you have got your terms mixed up, Anon. Separating a subject from its verb is in no way exceptional in English, as Clive has already shown you. What I think you mean is separating a verb from its object, which does happen in some cases but is often objectionable. In English one should say:

I met him yesterday. (Not: I met yesterday him.)

This word order is preferable because there are no inflections for nouns used as objects. You may often place an indirect object between the verb and the object:

I gave him money.

If the object is long, it is often possible to put something between the verb and its object:

I heard there the language of my childhood.

Cheers
CB

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

Re: before

Cool Breeze — Fri, 22 Sep 2006 09:58:57 GMT

Hi Incho

I agree with the previous posters completely; I would just like to elaborate a little from a non-native speaker's standpoint to a non-native speaker. We're both foreigners, right?

Since there are hardly any inflections in English, the word order is very rigid and certain phrases and expressions are often placed wherever they are placed for no apparent reason. I'd like to suggest you get a good grammar book written with non-native speakers in mind and take a look at the chapter entitled Word Order in it. Grammars written by non-native speakers tend to be better for this.

I don't have enough time to deal with word order in detail here, but here are some basics.

Think twice before you place anything between the main verb and the object. It is often possible to put an indirect object between the two, and if the object is long, you may put something short between it and the verb. Examples:

I saw him there. OK
I saw there him. WRONG

I heard there the language of my childhood. OK
I gave him a book. OK

There are three safe places for adverbs and the like in a clause (A, B and C):

(A) He is (B) reading a book (C).

Some words can be placed in all these positions without any real change in meaning:
Now he is reading a book.
He is now reading a book.
He is reading a book now.

Position A:
Usually more emphatic than the other positions. Adverbs denoting time or place are often placed in initial position:
Yesterday I met an old friend.
In Dar es Salaam it rained all week.
On the table lay a book that had been there for quite a while.

Position B:
There are seven rules that govern the placing of expressions in position B, and that's a little too much for this post, so look them up in a good grammar book, please.
In brief, the most common words to appear in position B are adverbs of indefinite time: often, usually, always, never, ever, seldom etc. Words like also, again, now and many adverbs ending in ly can be placed in this position:

I have never been there.
He also likes our proposal.
I slowly realized what he had done.

Position C:
All manner of expressions can be placed at the end of a clause. The word empty helps you remember the right order: manner, place, time. If there are two expressions of place or time, the smaller place or the more exact time comes first:

He sang beautifully on his balcony at nine last night.

In your native language and mine, word order is much freer. In fact, I can put the words spring has come again in any order in Finnish and the meaning remains the same. Some alternatives are poetic and unusual, but they are all correct. In English, if you change the word order, you have a question: Has spring come again? Asking questions is not that easy in Hungarian, I assume.

Cheers
CB

Re: the kinds of tenses

Anonymous — Sun, 09 Apr 2006 01:27:47 GMT

Believer wrote:
In regard to No.2, I can almost swear that I have heard some English professionals saying that there is an implicit word "to" there and whenever you hear the sentences without it, just remember it is to be included for a sentence to be a correct sentence.

While I recognize that some people will make this claim, I contend that it is counter productive to rely on the implicit existence of the word to.

The indirect object is not native to Indo-European languages. In the simplest scenario of their usage, these nouns had to be marked because word order alone was insufficient to identify the function of such nouns within the clause. With the evolution of English to the use of prepositions, the indirect object marker evolved in two distinct manners. When the direct object follows the verb and the indirect object is last, the earlier usage, the indirect object must be marked with a preposition, and to was selected for this purpose. When the indirect object follows the verb and the direct object is last, the newer usage, word order alone is sufficient to mark the function of the indirect object and no preposition is required.

I consider that it is not useful to get hung up on an arbitrary marker of the indirect object, the preposition to, and to believe that without its presence we must somehow devolve to the recognition that it must be there because it is required under other conditions.

Re: Help with English Grammar Exam (

Mister Micawber — Sun, 30 Jan 2005 22:49:14 GMT

My guesses:

(1) 'Queen' is the fifth noun, acting as an adjective; 'guests' is subject of the dependent clause.

(2) Subject preceding verb is normal word order in an affirmative statement.

(3) 'Answers' is the head-- it is modified by the other words.

(4) In ( a ) 'book' is the direct object and can become the subject; in ( c ) 'station' is a prepositional object, part of an adverbial, which cannot become the subject.

(5) The particles of phrasal verbs ( f ) cannot be fronted.

(6) In ( a ) 'an elephant' is generic; in ( b ) it is a specific elephant.

Re: The accusitive case

Mike A. — Tue, 18 Nov 2003 19:16:28 GMT

The first thing to note is the spelling: the correct spelling is a-c-c-u-s-a-t-i-v-e. Another thing to note is that the term often employed to identify the "case" of words like "him", "her" and "whom" is Objective, rather than Accusative (which is misleading in a simplified grammar like English's.)

Unlike German, English doesn't really have a well-developed Dative or Accusative case. We used to have those cases at an earlier stage of the language's development, but now those cases are only vestigial. Our "allgemein" Objective case, where it exists at all, performs both Dative and Accusative functions. What gives you the difference in meaning is generally word order.

For example, in the sentence "I gave him a spoon" -- which in German would be something like "Ich gab ihm einen Loeffel" -- "him" is a word in the Objective case, but it is clearly performing a dative function here. If you want to, you can decide that "him" is in the Dative case, but in English grammar it doesn't make much sense to think of a Dative case. We know that "him" is the indirect object of the verb -- i.e., performs a dative function -- because it *precedes* what is obviously the direct object, "spoon". Note that "spoon", the direct object, is unmarked by case ending, unlike the German.

On the other hand, in a sentence like "I saw him yesterday" -- which in German would be "Ich sah ihn gestern" -- it's the same word "him", in the same Objective case, but since there is no possible role for "him" in this sentence other than the direct object, you know that it has to be the direct object.

In American English, the normal practice would be for indirect objects to precede the direct objects: "I gave him a spoon." In British English -- or so I believe -- sometimes the practice is the opposite: the British might say "I gave it him" -- where "it" (the direct object) comes first.

Hope this helps.

Mike