Used with permission. Direct and Indirect Objects A direct object is the receiver of action within a sentence, as in "He hit the ball. In that sentence, "daughter" is the direct object and "Natasha" is the object complement, which renames or describes the direct object.
The indirect object identifies to or for whom or what the action of the verb is performed. The direct object and indirect object are different people or places or things. The direct objects in the sentences below are in boldface ; the indirect objects are in italics.
Incidentally, the word me and similar object-form pronouns such as him, us, them is not always an indirect object; it will also serve, sometimes, as a direct object. In English, nouns and their accompanying modifiers articles and adjectives do not change form when they are used as objects or indirect objects, as they do in many other languages.
This is not true of pronouns , however, which use different forms for different functions. He [subject] loves his grandmother. His grandmother loves him [object]. See, also, pronoun cases. Since this page is about the completers of thoughts, it is appropriate to include a brief description of complements. A complement notice the spelling of the word is any word or phrase that completes the sense of a subject , an object , or a verb. As you will see, the terminology describing predicates and complements can overlap and be a bit confusing.
Students are probably wise to learn one set of terms, not both. Adjective complements are also called predicate adjectives ; noun complements are also called predicate nouns or predicate nominatives. See predicates , above. Ramsay Fowler and Jane E. HarperCollins: New York. Here are more examples:. Ralph became president of our club. Norton is a menace. The Browns are good neighbors and good citizens. Some grammar books call predicate nominatives predicate nouns.
Still others combine predicate adjectives and predicate nominatives into a single category called subject complements. Notice that sometimes the verb be is followed by an adverb, especially a prepositional phrase, instead of a complement:. There are two kinds of action verbs, transitive and intransitive verbs. The sentences that follow contain intransitive verbs—no complement is present:.
Susan saw the Lloyds at the mall. June addressed the audience. Ed baked the cake yesterday. Ed wrote the article. Lochenhocher wants peace and quiet. Many verbs can be transitive or intransitive.
That is, they can be used with or without direct objects:. She read for two hours. He laughed. She sang. I run the store. She read the book. He laughed a hearty laugh. She sang an Irish song. When the direct object is a pronoun, it must be in the objective case:. Indirect objects appear only in sentences with direct objects, and then they appear between the transitive verb and the direct object.
They name a person or thing that receives the direct object in some way. In the following sentences, the indirect objects are underlined and the direct object is a note :. Bailey wrote me a note. Ed wrote her a note. We wrote Bailey and Ed a note.
Here are more sentences with indirect objects underlined followed by direct objects:. Redden taught me history.
Last night I read my daughter a book. We bought Ruthie an accordion. Notice that when pronouns are indirect objects, they are also in the objective case as with me and her in the sentences above. There is a test for the indirect object. Without changing the meaning of the sentence, the indirect object can be turned into the object of a prepositional phrase beginning with the preposition to or for. The prepositional phrase then appears after the direct object:.
Redden taught history to me. Last night I read a book to my daughter. We bought an accordion for Ruthie. But please notice the important difference. This sentence has an indirect object:. Apply market research to generate audience insights. Measure content performance. Develop and improve products. List of Partners vendors. Share Flipboard Email. Richard Nordquist. English and Rhetoric Professor. Richard Nordquist is professor emeritus of rhetoric and English at Georgia Southern University and the author of several university-level grammar and composition textbooks.
Featured Video. Cite this Article Format. Nordquist, Richard. Identifying the Sentence Subject in French. How to Build Sentences with Appositives.
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