Object (grammar)
An object in grammar is a sentence element and part of the sentence predicate. It denotes somebody or something involved in the subject's "performance" of the verb. As an example, the following sentence is given:
In the sentence "Mr Bobby kicked the ball", "ball" is the object.
"Mr Bobby" is the subject, the doer or performer, while "kick" is the action, and "ball" is the object involved in the action.
The main verb in the sentence determines whether there can or must be objects in the sentence, and if so how many and of what type.
Contents |
Types of object
Objects fall into three classes: a direct object, a prepositional object, and a non-prepositional indirect object. An indirect object is the recipient of the direct object, or an otherwise affected participant in the event. For example, if three sentences are considered:
- In "We threw stones", stones is the direct object of the verb threw.
- In "We listened to the radio", the radio is the object of the preposition to, and the prepositional object of the verb listened.
- In "They sent him a postcard", him is the (non-prepositional) indirect object of the verb sent ("double-object construction"), that - unlike e.g. in German - is marked as such only by word order in syntax.
Forms of object
The object may take the following nominal forms, such as in this consideration of the verb remember:
- As a noun, it could be used in the context of, I remembered Budapest.
- The object in I remembered to eat. is infinitive.
- The object "eating" in the sentence I remembered eating, is a gerund.
- In the sentence, I remembered the old days, the object "the old days" is a phrase.
- In the sentence I remembered that he had switched off the electricity, a clause is invoked as an object.
- In the sentence, I remembered "A Tale of Two Cities", a citation is invoked instead.
The object in linguistics
In inflected languages, objects may be marked using morphological case. In many languages, the patient of a ditransitive verb is marked in the same way as the single object of a monotransitive verb, and is called the direct object. The recipient has its own marking, and is called the indirect object. In Latin and many other languages, the direct object is marked by the accusative case, while the indirect object is typically marked by the dative case.
In more isolating languages such as English, objects are marked by their position in the sentence or using adpositions (like to in I gave a book to him). Modern English preserves a case distinction for pronouns, but it has conflated the accusative and the dative into a single objective form (him, her, me, etc., which may function either as direct or indirect objects).
In some languages, the recipient of a ditransitive verb is marked in the same way as the single object of a monotransitive verb, and is called the primary object. The patient of ditransitive verbs has its own marking, and is called the secondary object. Such languages are called dechticaetiative languages, and are mostly found among African languages.
An object can be turned into a syntactic subject using passive voice, if the language in question has such a construction. In dative languages, the direct object is promoted, while in dechticaetiative languages the primary object is promoted. English shares this property with dechticaetiative languages, since non-prepositional indirect objects can be promoted:
- His colleagues sent him a postcard.
- He was sent a postcard.
In the immense majority of languages, where there is a preferred word order in the sentence, the object is placed somewhere after the subject. Analytic languages additionally tend to place the object after the verb, so that it remains separate from the subject.
See also
External links
Categories
Syntactic entities