40.Fred senthis mothera card.
41.Buggsy askedFritza question.Let’s look carefully at these sentences. If we remove the noun phrases in
bold, we have:
40a. Fred sent a card.
41a. Buggsy asked a question.In these sentences, we can see that the noun phrasesa cardanda question
are objects; they are acted upon by their verbs. In the original sentences,his
motherandFritzhave a slightly different function: In 40,his motheraccepteda
card,and in 41Fritzaccepteda question.
We differentiate the two noun phrases following ditransitive verbs as fol-
lows: The noun phrase that is acted upon we refer to as adirect object;the noun
phrase that accepts the direct object we call anindirect object.Thus, in 40a
cardis the direct object andhis motheris the indirect object. The sentences be-
low are labeled to help illustrate the two constructions:
- Macarena gave Buggsy a kiss. (akiss= direct object;Buggsy= indirect object)
- Fritz told Rita a story. (a story= direct object;Rita= indirect object)
- Buggsy wrote the gang a note. (a note= direct object;the gang= indirect object)
- Rita showed Fred her earrings. (her earrings= direct object;Fred= indirect
object)
Ditransitive verbs raise some interesting questions and have been the subject
of considerable study over the last several years (e.g., Kratzer, 1996;
Langacker, 1999; McGinnis, 2002; Pylkkänen, 2002; Schmid, 2000). Do these
verbsrequiretwo objects, or are there instances in which they can take only
one, which means that they canaccepttwo objects? In the case ofask,the an-
swer clearly is that the verb can take a single object:Buggsy asked Fritz a ques-
tioncan becomeBuggsy asked Fritz;“a question” is implicit in the statement.
For other ditransitive verbs, however, the answer is not so clear. In the case of
Fred sent Macarena a gift,dropping the direct object may be grammatical, but
it changes the sentence grammatically and semantically:Fred sent Macarena.
Droppinga giftmaintains a grammatical sentence, but suddenlyMacarena
becomes the direct object rather than the indirect object, and the meaning is not
even close to the original. An equally troubling example occurs with the
ditransitive verbbuy:
TRADITIONAL GRAMMAR 75