# English: Subject of active sentence > object of passive?



## Michael Zwingli

This is a grammar question which arises from my trying to understand how voice and transitivity combine to effect the meaning of the second aorist tense of a specific Greek verb. It is well understood that if an active sentence is made passive, the direct object of the active sentence becomes the subject of the coordinate passive sentence. *I have recently read that in English grammar, the subject of the active sentence may be construed as the object of the passive sentence.* (Unfortunately, I cannot seem, now, to find the website on which I read that.)* I find myself questioning this*. See an example:

Active: _*The dog* chases the ball._
Passive: _The ball is chased by *the dog*._

According to what I read, "the dog", subject of the active sentence, is to be construed as the object in the passive sentence, but I do not view it as either a direct or indirect object. A direct object is that which is acted upon, and an indirect object is either the recipient or the beneficiary of the action, and I don't see "the dog" as experiencing either phenomenon in the passive sentence, wherein the subject "the ball" is that being acted upon, and "the dog" seems not to be the recipient of the action. *Can anyone tell me what the grammatical identity of "the dog" is in the passive sentence, and why so?* It clearly exists as part of the prepositional phrase "by the dog". *What is the title and function of this phrase in the passive sentence*...a "subordinate clause", perhaps? Thanks much. Now I have to decide how to title this thread in an acceptable way.


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## lingobingo

An obvious solution to this is to regard passive constructions as having both a grammatical subject (the ball, which receives the action) and a literal subject (the dog, which performs the action).


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## User With No Name

Don't people often use the word "agent" in this context?


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## lingobingo

Yes. The *agent* is the doer and the *patient* the done-to.


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## Michael Zwingli

lingobingo said:


> ...a grammatical subject (the ball, which receives the action)...


...hmm, it is true that the subject receives the action in passive construction. So, then from a grammatical perspective, how is the "subject" of a sentence to be defined? Simply as the _focus_ of the statement?


User With No Name said:


> Don't people often use the word "agent" in this context?





lingobingo said:


> Yes. The *agent* is the doer and the *patient* the done-to.


I don't remember ever learning these terms, and I had a parochial school education. (Might have been on a daydreaming jag when that was being presented.) Under this scheme, are the terms "subject" and "object" simply discarded and replaced? In the sentence "_The ball is chased by *the dog*_", is it the case that "the dog" is the agent, and "the ball" can be called the patient or the subject, in which second case the sentence would be called an "agent-subject" or "subject-agent" sentence? This is an interesting formula, one I intend to learn more about. In your opinion, can "the dog" in the passive sentence ever be called an "object"?


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## lentulax

Michael Zwingli said:


> According to what I read, "the dog", subject of the active sentence, is to be construed as the object in the passive sentence


I can't believe you read that - perhaps, since you can't locate the site, your memory is at fault.


Michael Zwingli said:


> In your opinion, can "the dog" in the passive sentence ever be called an "object"?


No, never.

EDIT : addition : whilst it may be that the subject of the passive verb is sometimes called the patient of the verbal action, it cannot make any kind of sense ever to refer to the agent as the object, either in Greek or English, though, as lingobingo has said, it might make sense to call the agent the literal (as opposed to the grammatical) subject.


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## Forero

The subject is what (or who) the sentence is about, and the predicate tells or asks something about the subject. The object or objects of the verb are part of the predicate.

The subject of a verb is always its first argument.

The subject of "The dog chases the ball" is "The dog".
The subject of "The ball is chased by the dog" is "The ball".
The subject of "A friend gave me a ball" is "A friend".
The subject of "A ball was given me by a friend" is "A ball".
The subject of "I was given a ball" is "I".


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## lingobingo

Michael Zwingli said:


> ...hmm, it is true that the subject receives the action in passive construction. So, then from a grammatical perspective, how is the "subject" of a sentence to be defined? Simply as the _focus_ of the statement?


The grammatical subject of any sentence is the subject of the main verb.

But in a passive construction, that grammatical subject becomes the *done-to* rather than the *doer* in terms of whatever action that verb actually/physically denotes – in linguistic terms the *patient* rather than the *agent*, as already said in #4. 

Note that only transitive verbs with a direct object can be used in passive constructions.

If you want it explained far less simply, try looking up Agent (grammar) - Wikipedia and Patient (grammar) - Wikipedia.


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## Michael Zwingli

lentulax said:


> I can't believe you read that - perhaps, since you can't locate the site, your memory is at


I might very well be mistaken, but I seem to clearly remember reading that, and being quite surprised. I will redouble my efforts to remember the keywords I used, and to find the website.

You know, in school, especially in high school here in the States, we usually tend to think of English grammar and literature as bullshit that one must fulfill along with the much more important eventual moneymakers: math and science. You know the ethos of the western world: "money talks, and bullshit walks". It is not until one wants to learn a foreign language or two that he realizes how very important an understanding of grammar in general truly is. _I personally wish that I had assigned more importance, and devoted more attention to English grammar in those days gone by. _

Can anyone indicate a particularly good overview of grammar in general, with a particular application to English grammar? Are there any examples of classic English grammar that are still in print? Judging by what I see (such as the death of cursive writing instruction), I have my doubts.

EDIT: My misconception that "subject" always means "the doer of the action" and "object" means "receiver of the action" has been part of my problem. I think, also, that a large part of my deficit here is onomastic in nature. I just don't have enough of the terminology to discern all the moving parts of speech, and the interrelationships between them, in the active<>passive continuum. Learning about the "agent"/"patient" dichotomy seems a small step in the right direction.


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## billj

Michael Zwingli said:


> This is a grammar question which arises from my trying to understand how voice and transitivity combine to effect the meaning of the second aorist tense of a specific Greek verb. It is well understood that if an active sentence is made passive, the direct object of the active sentence becomes the subject of the coordinate passive sentence. *I have recently read that in English grammar, the subject of the active sentence may be construed as the object of the passive sentence.* (Unfortunately, I cannot seem, now, to find the website on which I read that.)* I find myself questioning this*. See an example:
> 
> Active: _*The dog* chases the ball._
> Passive: _The ball is chased by *the dog*._
> 
> According to what I read, "the dog", subject of the active sentence, is to be construed as the object in the passive sentence, but I do not view it as either a direct or indirect object. A direct object is that which is acted upon, and an indirect object is either the recipient or the beneficiary of the action, and I don't see "the dog" as experiencing either phenomenon in the passive sentence, wherein the subject "the ball" is that being acted upon, and "the dog" seems not to be the recipient of the action. *Can anyone tell me what the grammatical identity of "the dog" is in the passive sentence, and why so?* It clearly exists as part of the prepositional phrase "by the dog". *What is the title and function of this phrase in the passive sentence*...a "subordinate clause", perhaps? Thanks much. Now I have to decide how to title this thread in an acceptable way.



The subject of the active clause appears in the passive, not as object of the verb, but as *complement* of the preposition "by" in a preposition phrase functioning as *complement* of "chased".

Is that what you wanted to know?


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## Keith Bradford

billj said:


> The subject of the active clause appears in the passive, not as object of the verb, but as *complement of the preposition "by" in a preposition phrase functioning as complement of "chased"...*


   I thought that was often called the _indirect object_, or have I misremembered?


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## User With No Name

Keith Bradford said:


> I thought that was often called the _indirect object_, or have I misremembered?


In "The ball is chased by the dog," I would not call "the dog" an indirect object. But my memory is pretty shaky, too.


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## Michael Zwingli

Keith Bradford said:


> I thought that was often called the _indirect object_, or have I misremembered?





User With No Name said:


> I would not call "the dog" an indirecto object. But my memory is pretty shaky, too.


No, it is not an indirect object, which of necessity must be the beneficiary of the verbal action in an active voice sentence. For instance, in the sentence "_The dog chased the ball for it's master", _the noun "it's master" is the indirect object, as it benefits from the action of the dog chasing the ball. Indirect objects are dative case, as opposed to accusative case for direct objects (for what that's worth).

The more I think of this, the distinction made by @lingobingo, between grammatical function and literary function seems of great importance in assessing passive constructions.


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## lingobingo

Another definition being that an indirect object is the first one after a ditransitive verb use, as in “he gave the dog the ball”.

But note that you need its, not it’s (= it is), in that explanation.


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## Michael Zwingli

lingobingo said:


> But note that you need its, not it’s (= it is) in that explanation.


My device's autocorrect. I grow tired of making the changes.


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## billj

Michael Zwingli said:


> No, it is not an indirect object, which of necessity must be the beneficiary of the verbal action in an active voice sentence. For instance, in the sentence "_The dog chased the ball for it's master", _the noun "it's master" is the indirect object, as it benefits from the action of the dog chasing the ball. Indirect objects are dative case, as opposed to accusative case for direct objects (for what that's worth).



_The dog chased the ball for its master._

I wouldn't go along with what you say. Grammatically, an indirect object is the complement of a verb, not a preposition. In your example, "it's master" is thus complement (or object) of the preposition "for".

Semantically, I wouldn't say that "its master" is the recipient of the ball-chasing, but denotes who it did the chasing for. Compare "The master gave the dog a ball", where "a ball" is direct object and "the dog" is indirect object.


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## User With No Name

billj said:


> Semantically, I wouldn't say that "its master" is the recipient of the ball-chasing, but denotes who it did the chasing for. Compare "The master gave the dog a ball", where "a ball" is direct object and "the dog" is indirect object.


Would you maintain the same distinction between "The master gave the dog a ball" (_ball_ is indirect object) and "The master gave a ball to the dog" (_dog_ is object of the preposition _to_)?


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## RM1(SS)

User With No Name said:


> In "The ball is chased by the dog," I would not call "the dog" an indirect object. But my memory is pretty shaky, too.


When I was in school, the only thing it was ever called was "the object of the preposition". I gather that's now considered to be rather archaic terminology.


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## Michael Zwingli

billj said:


> I wouldn't go along with what you say. Grammatically, an indirect object is the complement of a verb, not a preposition. In your example, "it's master" is thus complement (or object) of the preposition "for"


Unlike in a more synthetic language such as Latin, in English indirect objects almost always are introduced by a preposition, usually "to", as in "The dog gave the ball _to its master_", which, as @User With No Name has hinted, can also be written "The dog gave _its master_ the ball". In both sentences, "its master" is the (indirect) object-beneficiary of, and passive participant in the verbal action, not the object of the preposition "to".

indirect object - Wiktionary


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## SevenDays

Michael Zwingli said:


> This is a grammar question which arises from my trying to understand how voice and transitivity combine to effect the meaning of the second aorist tense of a specific Greek verb. It is well understood that if an active sentence is made passive, the direct object of the active sentence becomes the subject of the coordinate passive sentence. *I have recently read that in English grammar, the subject of the active sentence may be construed as the object of the passive sentence.* (Unfortunately, I cannot seem, now, to find the website on which I read that.)* I find myself questioning this*. See an example:
> 
> Active: _*The dog* chases the ball._
> Passive: _The ball is chased by *the dog*._
> 
> According to what I read, "the dog", subject of the active sentence, is to be construed as the object in the passive sentence, but I do not view it as either a direct or indirect object. A direct object is that which is acted upon, and an indirect object is either the recipient or the beneficiary of the action, and I don't see "the dog" as experiencing either phenomenon in the passive sentence, wherein the subject "the ball" is that being acted upon, and "the dog" seems not to be the recipient of the action. *Can anyone tell me what the grammatical identity of "the dog" is in the passive sentence, and why so?* It clearly exists as part of the prepositional phrase "by the dog". *What is the title and function of this phrase in the passive sentence*...a "subordinate clause", perhaps? Thanks much. Now I have to decide how to title this thread in an acceptable way.


It's not an easy topic, but don't despair.

It helps to differentiate between _structure_ (syntax) and _meaning_ (semantics). Syntax and Semantic, two linguistic branches, are key components of language/communication. Unfortunately, grammar books, particularly those for a general audience, don't make a distinction between syntax and semantics, and that leads to confusion, as you've found out. In any event:

In semantics, terms such as_ subject_, _direct object_ and _indirect object_ are defined by "meaning." And, by the way, these are also terms used in _Traditional Grammar_, the type of grammar taught in schools (up to high school). Thus, the subject is the "doer" of an action, the direct object is the "recipient" of an action, and the indirect object is the "beneficiary" of an action. The prototypical form for all three terms is a "noun phrase." In _traditional grammar,_ the term "indirect object" is also given to prepositional phrases. My guess is that they site that you visited, and where you got your information, relies on _Traditional Grammar_, which is why they call "by the dog" an indirect object.

But "meaning" (i.e. "doer." "recipient," "beneficiary") is not what syntax takes into account when defining those terms. In syntax, subject and objects are _grammatical/syntactic categories_, with identifiable _syntactic features_. Thus, "subject" is that grammatical elements which, for example, [1] agrees in _number_ singular or plural with the verb (_the dog chases ~ the dogs chase_); [2] undergoes _inversion _with the auxiliary verb to form questions (_The ball is chased ~ Is the ball chased?_). If there is no auxiliary verb, auxiliary "do/does" is added (_The dog chases the ball ~ The dog does chase the ball ~ Does the dog chase the ball?_). Several grammatical elements can function as "subject:"

Noun phrase: _The dog chases the ball_
Finite clause: _That the dog chases the ball is obvious_
Nonfinite clause: _Chasing the ball makes the dog tired_
Prepositional Phrase: _Under the bed is where you find the dog_
etc.
As subjects, all of these can do either agreement or inversion.

In syntax, the direct and indirect objects have distinctive properties. For example, the direct object comes immediately after the verb (_The dog chases the ball_). An indirect object can only appear if there is already a direct object. In such cases, the indirect object comes first, followed by the direct object. This is what happens with ditransitive verbs (_I gave the dog a ball_). A further feature of the indirect object is that it commonly undergoes what's known as "dative transformation," which basically means that the indirect object becomes a prepositional phrase and is placed after the direct object (_I gave a ball to the dog_). In syntax, "to the dog" is not an indirect object, because (1) it doesn't come before the verb, and (2) prepositional phrases are not indirect objects.  

Now, in specialized grammars, syntacticians/linguists don't always use the terms "direct" and "indirect" objects, largely because the relationship to "recipient" and "beneficiary" is not always clear. For example, in _Relational Grammar_, some simply call the direct object "object." If there are two objects, the labels "object 1" and "object 2" are used. And in _Functional Grammar_, they just use the term "complements" instead of "objects" following on the idea that grammatical elements "complete" the meaning of the verb.

Active and passive sentences are two ways of presenting the same information, but with a different focus. Basically, what comes first gets greater focus. And so in the active

_The dog chases the ball_

"The dog" is the "subject" by semantics/meaning (the "doer") and by syntax (by agreement and by inversion). If you want to place greater focus on the direct object "the ball," turn to the passive:

_The ball is chased by the dog_

In syntax, identifying the "subject" is not a problem: it's "The ball;" it's what undergoes agreement and inversion with the verb. But, in semantics, "The ball" is not a "doer." The "doer" is "the dog," but "the dog" appears represented as a prepositional phrase, but it can't be "subject" because that slot is already occupied by "The ball." Someone long ago came up with a new label for the prepositional phrase "by the dog:" *agent*. "Agent" is commonly used across the board, in both syntax and semantics, to refer to that grammatical element in the passive voice which isn't the "subject" but which performs the verb action. Many times, the "agent" is optional (_Mistakes were made_), because disclosing the "agent" is not really necessary. But in some cases, such as your example, the "agent" is a necessity. _The ball is chased _is not quite the same as _The ball is chased by the dog_.


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## Forero

It seems there is a difference between traditional AmE grammar and traditional BrE grammar.

In traditional AmE grammar, the Old English cases dative, accusative, and instrumental are never mentioned. No person, dog, or ball is ever a direct object or an indirect object. Only a word or phrase can be an indirect object, and an indirect object is never a phrase that follows or begins with a preposition (e.g. _to_, _for_, _of_, _by_, _with_). In the following 3 sentences, _him_ is an indirect object:

_They asked him his name.
You gave him a ball.
I baked him a cake._

That these mean (almost) the same as the following similar sentences with prepositions does not make _him_ an indirect object in the latter:

_They asked of him his name.
You gave to him a ball.
I baked for him a cake.

Him_ is the object of a preposition (_of_, _to_, _for_) in each of the latter 3 sentences.


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## Michael Zwingli

Forero said:


> In traditional AmE grammar, the Old English cases dative, accusative, and instrumental are never mentioned. No person, dog, or ball is ever a direct object or an indirect object.


Haha, I have completely forgotten all of the scant (American) English grammar that I learned in school. My understanding of indirect objects derives utterly from my period of wrestling with the Latin dative during my studies of that language. Though we no longer use or mention grammatical case, I don't think that either British or American English grammar has deviated significantly, with respect to indirect objects, from the understanding presented in Latin. In fact, I think that one of the benefits of studying Latin or Greek is that the identity of such things as indirect objects are clarified by means of the study of grammatical case.


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## Michael Zwingli

Forero said:


> No person, dog, or ball is ever a direct object or an indirect object.


But, any grammatical object must be a noun of some kind...


Forero said:


> That these mean (almost) the same as the following similar sentences with prepositions does not make _him_ an indirect object in the latter:
> 
> _They asked of him his name.
> You gave to him a ball.
> I baked for him a cake._



I don't think that these nouns being called the "objects" of their respective controlling prepositions proscribes their being construed to be indirect objects of the sentence, in relation to the verbal action. Calling them "objects of their prepositions" simply indicates that they are controlled by and complete the meaning introduced by the prepositions, and so forming a phrase with distinct meaning..

-------------------------------------------------------------

From the Wikipedia article entitled "Oblique case":

An objective case is marked on the English personal pronouns and as such serves the role of the accusative and dative cases that other Indo-European languages employ. These forms are often called object pronouns. They serve a variety of grammatical functions which they would not in languages that differentiate the two. An example using first person singular objective pronoun _me_:


in an accusative role for a direct object (including double object and oblique ditransitives):
_Do you see me? The army sent me to Korea._

in a *dative role *for an *indirect object:*
_Kim passed the pancakes *to me*.  _Or colloquially, _Kim passed me the pancakes._

etc., etc.

---------------------------------------------------------------

So you see, the noun of a prepositional phrase in the English oblique can be construed at once as the object of it's preposition, and as the indirect object of the sentence. I think that the construction holds for any noun, as it does for personal pronouns. If "me" can be the indirect object of "_Kim passed the pancakes *to me*"_, then "its master" can be the indirect object of "_The dog gave the ball *to its master*_", or indeed for "_The dog chased the ball *for its master*_", don't you think?


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## lentulax

Michael Zwingli said:


> In fact, I think that one of the benefits of studying Latin or Greek is that the identity of such things as indirect objects are clarified by means of the study of grammatical case.


In a way, that begs the question. It wouldn't help you to deal with the fact that in English we can say 'He gave Marcus the ball' and 'He gave the ball to Marcus' (only one choice in Latin). Traditional grammar in general applies the formulations of Latin grammar to English, and since there are may similarities in syntax etc. it's not surprising that it works quite well. In fact, I basically think in terms of traditional grammar, and still thinks it's the simplest way of offering useful explanations to learners; but modern linguists/grammarians want to take into account all those awkward usages that we conveniently ignore, and get closer to how English, and language generally, works; the problem for many is that modern linguists/grammarians haven't agreed on a vocabulary with which to express their insights (or, indeed, on a basic approach), and that getting to grips with their analyses demands a lot of effort - more than many, including myself, are prepared to make. The terminology of traditional grammar is much more of a lingua franca.


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## Michael Zwingli

lentulax said:


> Traditional grammar in general applies the formulations of Latin grammar to English, and since there are may similarities in syntax etc. it's not surprising that it works quite well. [...] The terminology of traditional grammar is much more of a lingua franca.


Well said!


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## User With No Name

Forero said:


> No person, dog, or ball is ever a direct object or an indirect object.


I'm afraid you completely lost me right here. Could you clarify this, please? Thanks.


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## RM1(SS)

Forero said:


> In traditional AmE grammar, the Old English cases dative, accusative, and instrumental are never mentioned.


I learned about genitive, dative and accusative in 10th grade, in first-year German, and subjunctive the following year, in second-year German.

(I already knew about nominative because of the sentence "It is I" -- the last word was a predicate nominative and was by definition in the nominative case.)


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## Michael Zwingli

Michael Zwingli said:


> So you see, the noun of a prepositional phrase in the English oblique can be construed at once as the object of it's preposition, and as the indirect object of the sentence.


This is not to say that every prepositional phrase in this type of sentence will have a noun which is the indirect object of the sentence. Knowing some Latin grammar helps in determining which ones can...which prepositions can control a phrase containing an indirect object. Only those prepositions corresponding to those Latin prepositions which control the dative can do so. For instance, "Robert" in the sentence "Charles pushed the car with Robert" is not an indirect object, as old Bobby is not the beneficiary of the verbal action. English "with" corresponds to Latin "cum", which controls not the dative, but rather the ablative case.


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## Michael Zwingli

RM1(SS) said:


> I learned about genitive, dative and accusative in 10th grade, in first-year German, and subjunctive the following year, in second-year German.


This is why Germans (generally) have a bit of an easier time learning Latin and Ancient Greek than do we Anglos.


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## berndf

User With No Name said:


> I'm afraid you completely lost me right here. Could you clarify this, please? Thanks.


That is the difference between subject-object and agent-patient. They belong to different levels of analysis: subject and object are terms of syntactic analysis and refer to words and not to things or persons these words stand for while agent and patient refer to the objects or persons words stand for and not for the words as such.

But I am not quite sure why he relates this to BrE vs. AmE grammar. These are quite general concepts that apply to many grammar systems.


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## billj

Michael Zwingli said:


> Unlike in a more synthetic language such as Latin, *in English indirect objects almost always are introduced by a preposition, usually "to", as in "The dog gave the ball to its master"*, which, as @User With No Name has hinted, can also be written "The dog gave _its master_ the ball". In both sentences, "its master" is the (indirect) object-beneficiary of, and passive participant in the verbal action, not the object of the preposition "to".
> 
> indirect object - Wiktionary



I'm sorry, but what you say is untrue. In fact, the exact opposite is the case.

Noun phrases functioning as core complements are related directly to the verb, while those functioning within preposition phrases are related to the verb only indirectly, via the preposition. In your example, "its master" is complement of the preposition "to", not complement of the verb "gave". "Its master" is of course the recipient, and although a recipient is semantically involved in the semantics of "gave", the preposition "to" can be regarded merely as identifying the noun phrase that has this role.

Consider this pair:

a. _I sent Sue __a copy__.     _b.  _I sent a copy to Sue._

You would consider that "Sue" is indirect object in b.  just as it is in a.

But "Sue" also has that role in the passive _Sue was sent a copy, _yet you wouldn't want to say that "Sue" was indirect object here: "Sue" is clearly subject.


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## berndf

billj said:


> But "Sue" also has that role in the passive _Sue was sent a copy, _yet you wouldn't want to say that "Sue" was indirect object here: "Sue" is clearly subject.


That is the reason why the concept of direct and indirect object is so obscure in English and we are having this discussions. In languages where case inflections still exist and direct and indirect objects are naturally distinct (direct object=accusative, indirect object=dative), sentences like
_She was sent a copy_
are ungrammatical. Only direct (accusative) objects can become the subject of the passive voice.

Old English had the concept of subject-less passive voice, i.e. you could say, translated into modern English, something like this:
_*was sent her a copy_
but not in that world order because Old English was essentially (with some exceptions that exhibit modern SVO word order and also with remnants of the older Germanic SOV word order) still a V2-language, i.e. it supported various word orders as long as the finite verb remained in second position. For that reason, the dative object was moved into first positions producing sentences like (again translated into modern English):
_Her was sent a copy,
Her was a copy sent._
The latter structure is still used in modern German, which still has case endings and has still retained V2 word order.

In Middle English case endings had decayed and these dative objects on first positions were re-interpreted as subjects and, hence, sentences like
_She was sent a copy_
became possible.


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## Michael Zwingli

billj said:


> But "Sue" also has that role in the passive _Sue was sent a copy, _yet you wouldn't want to say that "Sue" was indirect object here: "Sue" is clearly subject.


Yes, of course, when talking about indirect objects, we are dealing with the active voice. Apart from that, I must digest the latest posts after splashing some water on my face (just got up, you know).


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## berndf

Michael Zwingli said:


> Yes, of course


In *modern *English, yes. Historically, it was indeed an indirect object, even in passive voice. See my #32.


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## Michael Zwingli

billj said:


> Noun phrases functioning as core complements are related directly to the verb, while those functioning within preposition phrases are related to the verb only indirectly, via the preposition. In your example, "its master" is complement of the preposition "to", not complement of the verb "gave". "Its master" is of course the recipient, and although a recipient is semantically involved in the semantics of "gave", the preposition "to" can be regarded


Yes, regarding completion, but I analyze the parts of speech a bit differently than you appear to (perhaps I am wrong). My feeling is that "_The dog gave its master the ball_" is a mere colloquialism, what may be called an example of linguistic "de-analysis" and ungrammatical in the strictest sense, used (originally informally, and now legitimized through usage) in place of the more grammatically correct (read "complete") "_The dog gave the ball to its master_". In this second sentence, the entire prepositional phrase _to its master_, and not only _its master_ represents the indirect object, the preposition only having been made necessary as a syntactic marker by the loss of inflection in the language. In fact, the only reason the preposition "to" appears in the sentence in the first place (indeed, as is the same with inflection in synthetic languages) is to indicate distransitivity in the action.


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## berndf

Michael Zwingli said:


> My feeling is that "_The dog gave its master the ball_" is a mere colloquialism


I don't see why. You can express the (semantic) beneficiary of the action with to different syntactic constructs, with an indirect object:
_The dog gave its master the ball_
or with a prepositional adjunct:
_The dog gave the ball to its master_.
Both are possible and mean the same.


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## Michael Zwingli

berndf said:


> I don't see why. You can express the (semantic) beneficiary of the action with to different syntactic constructs, with an indirect object:
> _The dog gave its master the ball_
> or with a prepositional adjunct:
> _The dog gave the ball to its master_.


I think this is indicated by the positional dependence of _its master_ in _The dog gave its master the ball_...to say _The dog gave the ball its master _would render a confused meaning, but to say _The dog gave to its master the ball _renders a comprehensible meaning. To me, this indicates an essential incompleteness when the prepositional marker is removed.

The preposition "to" in _The dog gave the ball to its master_ does not serve the same function (an essentially prepositional function) as it does in a sentence like _We went to the store before lunch,_ where it (prepositionally) indicates position or motion. It acts in the sentence that we are considering, as a grammatical marker, indicating distransitivity and a passive participant in the action of the verb.


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## berndf

Michael Zwingli said:


> I think this is indicated by the positional dependence of _its master_ in _The dog gave its master the ball_...to say _The dog gave the ball its master _would render a confused meaning, but to say _The dog gave to its master the ball _renders a comprehensible meaning. To me, this indicates an essential incompleteness when the prepositional marker is removed.


_*The dog gave the ball its master_.
is excluded because of the missing case markers in English and the direct and indirect objects are therefore distinguished by word order:
_<subject> <verb> <indirect object> <direct object>_.
This why you have to replace the indirect object by a prepositional adjunct if you want to change the order:
_<subject> <verb> <direct object>_ <adjunct>...
Indirect objects and prepositional adjuncts are different syntactic groups which can express the same thing and can therefore be semantically interchangeable. _Prepositional adjuncts_ (as a third class of objects in addition to _direct _and _indirect objects_) are sometimes also called _prepositional objects_. I think, this is more a matter of taste than of substance.


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## Michael Zwingli

berndf said:


> _*The dog gave the ball its master_.
> is excluded because of the missing case markers in English and the direct and indirect objects are therefore distinguished by word order


Yes, I think you echo what I was trying to indicate.



berndf said:


> _Prepositional adjuncts_ (as a third class of objects in addition to _direct _and _indirect objects_) are sometimes also called _prepositional objects_.


This begs a question...if the prep. phrase can be called a "prepositional object", what type of object is it? Is it not an indirect object within the context of the sentence? Are we not playing a type of semantic shell game? In other words, why can the "prepositional adjunct" not be the "indirect object" of the sentence? Does the fact of it's being a "prepositional adjunct" preclude its being the indirect object?


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## berndf

berndf said:


> _*The dog gave the ball its master_.
> is excluded because of the missing case markers in English and the direct and indirect objects are therefore distinguished by word order


Side note: In fully case inflected Germanic languages, like German, all 6 possible permutation of subject indirect and direct object are possible with their roles being identified by case markers.

These four are idiomatic:
_De*r* Hund gab seine*m* Herrchen de*n* Ball_.
_De*r* Hund gab de*n* Ball seine*m* Herrchen.
Seine*m* Herrchen gab der Hund de*n* Ball.
De*n* Ball gab de*r* Hund seine*m* Herrchen._

Subject in last position is theoretically possible but almost only used with poetic licence:
_Seine*m* Herrchen gab de*n* Ball de*r* Hund.
De*n* Ball gab seine*m* Herrchen de*r* Hund._


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## berndf

Michael Zwingli said:


> what type of object is it?


See above:


berndf said:


> (as a third class of objects in addition to _direct _and _indirect objects_)


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## Michael Zwingli

@berndf, what is the function in the sentence of the third class of objects? It seems to me, that its function is to indicate and specify distransitivity in what the sentence indicates happens. Is the prepositional phrase/adjunct/object not, then, an indirect object?


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## berndf

Michael Zwingli said:


> @berndf, what is the function in the sentence of the third class of objects?


Different functions for different verbs:
_He ran into his neighbour 
He put the Pizza __on the table_.

You can have all three types in the same sentence;
_She prepared him scrambled eggs for breakfast_.

The concept is mainly useful in the context of _valency theory_.


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## Michael Zwingli

berndf said:


> Different functions for different verbs:
> _He ran into his neighbour
> He put the Pizza __on the table_.


But, specifically for a sentence with a direct object, is not the function of the prepositional adjunct as I have indicated above?


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## berndf

Michael Zwingli said:


> But, specifically for a sentence with a direct object, is not the function of the prepositional adjunct as I have indicated above?


As I said, a prepositional adjunct *can* have the same semantic function as an indirect object, namely to express the beneficiary of an action. But prepositional adjuncts can have many other semantic functions.


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## Michael Zwingli

berndf said:


> As I said, a prepositional adjunct *can* have the same semantic function as an indirect object, namely to express the beneficiary of an action. But prepositional adjuncts can have many other semantic functions.


Then, why do we not limit use of the term "prepositional adjunct" to cases in which such constructions exist in simple transitive sentences, and call them "indirect objects" where they indicate a distransitive situation? That way, we would avoid the confusion attending an onomastic overlap, and the term "prepositional phrase" would remain the umbrella term? In other words, why should it be viewed as "a prepositional adjunct acting as an indirect object", when it can simply be construed according to its grammatical function, as an "indirect object"?


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## berndf

Why would we? A _prepositional adjunct _is called so because it is _prepositional _(=governed by a preposition) and not because it can be semantically equivalent to an indirect object (which, as part of its definition, is not governed by a preposition). If and where such an equivalence exists, it is incidental.


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## Michael Zwingli

Grammatically, an "adjunct" is defined as "a *dispensable* phrase in a sentence that amplifies its meaning". In the distransitive sentence, the phrase that is yet called a "prepositional adjunct" is not dispensable, but is necessary to show the distransitivity. Because of this, "prepositional adjunct seems a misnomer in such sentences...within the distransitive context.


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## Roxxxannne

Michael Zwingli said:


> This is a grammar question which arises from my trying to understand how voice and transitivity combine to effect the meaning of the second aorist tense of a specific Greek verb.


What is the specific Greek verb?


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## berndf

Michael Zwingli said:


> Grammatically, an "adjunct" is defined as "a *dispensable* phrase in a sentence that amplifies its meaning". In the distransitive sentence, the phrase that is yet called a "prepositional adjunct" is not dispensable, but s necessary to show the distransitivity. Because of this, "prepositional adjunct seems a misnomer in such sentences.


That would be one reason of conceptually differentiating between _prepositional objects_ and _prepositional adjuncts_. A _prepositional phrase _is a _prepositional object_ if it is part of the valence structure or signature of a verb and verbs with different signatures are (potentially) distinct verbs. Obviously, in
_He ran into his neighbour and
He ran his own company,_
the verbs _run+direct object_ and _run+into+NP_ have different meanings.

As I said, the concept makes most sense with _valency theory_ in mind, which I find rather useful yet surprisingly seldom discussed.


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## Michael Zwingli

Roxxxannne said:


> What is the specific Greek verb?


_φῠ́ω_, particularly with respect to substantivization of the 2 aorist masculine participle _φῡ́ς._


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## Roxxxannne

Thanks! So this is a continuation of your thread in the "Ελληνικά (Greek)" forum here. I point that out because the discussion there might be interesting to some people reading this thread.


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## Michael Zwingli

Roxxxannne said:


> the discussion there might be interesting to some people reading this


Yes, certainly, that discussion is what prompted my queries about transitivity, voice and meaning, but this discussion has taken on a life of its own, a bit of a deviation, and has become very interesting in its own right.


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## Roxxxannne

Agreed, but you did mention "a specific Greek verb" in your OP and people reading this in the future might wonder what the verb was and what prompted you to start this thread.


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## SevenDays

This thread has branched in several directions, but a basic question remains (I think). 

(a) _The dog gave its master the ball_
(b) _The dog gave the ball to its master_

If "its master" is the "indirect object" in (a) why can't it be the "indirect object" in (b), even if "its master" appears inside a prepositional phrase? After all, the overall meaning of (a) and (b) is the same.

The problem with calling "to his master" an "indirect object" is that it's not exactly natural to place this indirect object/prepositional phrase in the canonical position of "indirect object," between the transitive verb and the direct object:

(c) _The dog gave to its master the ball  _?

I'm not sure we would tell students and learners that (c) is what native speakers by default naturally say. As it turns out, the verb "give" is sensitive to the placement of prepositional phrases, particularly when a non-sentient is the "giver:"

_The noise gave my wife a headache
The noise gave a headache to my wife
The noise gave to my wife a headache _??

And so perhaps "placement" is evidence that the "indirect object" is realized by a noun phrase (and not a prepositional phrase).


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## Hulalessar

Forero said:


> The subject of "I was given a ball" is "I".





berndf said:


> That is the reason why the concept of direct and indirect object is so obscure in English and we are having this discussions. In languages where case inflections still exist and direct and indirect objects are naturally distinct (direct object=accusative, indirect object=dative), sentences like
> _She was sent a copy_
> are ungrammatical. Only direct (accusative) objects can become the subject of the passive voice.
> 
> Old English had the concept of subject-less passive voice, i.e. you could say, translated into modern English, something like this:
> _*was sent her a copy_
> but not in that world order because Old English was essentially (with some exceptions that exhibit modern SVO word order and also with remnants of the older Germanic SOV word order) still a V2-language, i.e. it supported various word orders as long as the finite verb remained in second position. For that reason, the dative object was moved into first positions producing sentences like (again translated into modern English):
> _Her was sent a copy,
> Her was a copy sent._
> The latter structure is still used in modern German, which still has case endings and has still retained V2 word order.
> 
> In Middle English case endings had decayed and these dative objects on first positions were re-interpreted as subjects and, hence, sentences like
> _She was sent a copy_
> became possible.



We had a long discussion about this construction a while ago. I failed to persuade anyone (or at least anyone who posted in the thread) that in sentences like "I was given a ball", "I" is the indirect object and "a ball" is the subject. Reading Berndf's post in this thread I am wondering if he is coming round to my point of view. He says the construction is ungrammatical which comes close to saying that it should be at least "Me was given a ball" if not "A ball was given (to) me". I think I said in the other thread that someone had described the construction as bad grammar but good English. That gets to what is going on, but I think we really have to class good English as good grammar. The form is best described as an oddity.


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## Michael Zwingli

Hulalessar said:


> Me was given a ball


Hey, that's how it's said in Jamaica, mon! 😉 (almost certainly a transferred Akan nominative personal pronoun which just happens to resemble an English accusative personal pronoun)


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## Michael Zwingli

SevenDays said:


> If "its master" is the "indirect object" in (a) why can't it be the "indirect object" in (b), even if "its master" appears inside a prepositional phrase? After all, the overall meaning of (a) and (b) is


My theory is that "to its master" is the true indirect object, and that replacement thereof by "its master" is simply a "regularized" (not really the word I want) colloquialism. The preposition in "to its master" exists in analytical English in order to indicate a dative case.


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## berndf

Michael Zwingli said:


> "to its master" is the true indirect object


Absolutely not. I am a bit confused. Are we back to square one after our discussion?


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## berndf

Hulalessar said:


> That gets to what is going on, but I think we really have to class good English as good grammar. The form is best described as an oddity.


I would say it is impractical and therefore fell out of use in favour of its prepositional replacement construction.

I find it useful to look at German as a kind of a time machine to look at the development in English because it has retained the same case system as late Old English had (with 4 cases) but some of the case endings have decayed. In German, _subject-verb-indirect object-direct object_ is the unmarked word order and _subject-verb-direct object-indirect object_ is a marked form that stresses the indirect object (_Er gab das Buch seinem Freund [und nicht jemand anderem]_). If both, the direct and indirect object, don't contain any parts with active case endings, as in_ Er stellte Fred Hans zur Seite_, you would only ever use the unmarked order because otherwise you couldn't determine the meaning. In English, the dative-accusative inflections have completely merged (even with pronouns have merged, like _me,mec>me_) and there are no cases left where the two word orders could be distinguished except pragmatically by context. Probably as a consequence of this, the marked word order has been completely abandoned.


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## Forero

berndf said:


> the marked word order has been completely abandoned.


… in standard English. "Give it me" can sometimes be heard (somewhere in Britain?), and I daresay it sounds better than "Give me it".


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## Hulalessar

SevenDays said:


> It helps to differentiate between _structure_ (syntax) and _meaning_ (semantics).


I would say it helps to distinguish form and function


Michael Zwingli said:


> In fact, I think that one of the benefits of studying Latin or Greek is that the identity of such things as indirect objects are clarified by means of the study of grammatical case.


You certainly need to know what subjects and objects are to do Latin and Greek. A possible downside though is think that, for example, nominative = subject, when the nominative can also be the complement of a linking verb; to do so is to confuse the form of a noun with its function. So, whilst it is correct to say that in Latin the subject of a sentence must be in the nominative case, it is not correct to say that a noun in the nominative case is always the subject of a sentence.

It is also important to describe a language in its own terms, and not in the terms of another. It is true that English was traditionally described in terms of Latin grammar and since the two are in the same language family it worked tolerably well. However, some aspects of English grammar are not adequately explained by the traditional "parts of speech". The problem with some new systems is that they throw the baby out with the bathwater. There is also a tendency to look for functions which match forms in other languages: "Basque has ergativity - we'll have some of that!" I need to be convinced that "topic" and "comment" are useful comments in the analysis of English, at least when teaching it.


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## Michael Zwingli

berndf said:


> prepositional replacement construction.


By this, do you mean replacement of inflection by prepositional phrases?



berndf said:


> Are we back to square one after our discussion?


Well, I hope not... I should refine my post of last evening, made when I was tired from a day of sweep and mop. I don't feel that the entire prepositional phrase represents the indirect object, but just the noun of the phrase. The preposition seems to me to exist as a case marker. The reason for my feeling thusly might be because, as I said, it has been some thirty years since I have had any formal contact with English grammar (which was in "high school") but have studied Latin in recent years, so synthetic thinking is much more fresh in my mind. I do not in the least remember why things are done as they are in English prose from a syntactic perspective, and as @Hulalessar has well indicated,



Hulalessar said:


> It is also important to describe a language in its own terms, and not in the terms of another.


I have some trouble with this as pertains to English because of my relative unfamiliarity.


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## Sobakus

SevenDays said:


> If "its master" is the "indirect object" in (a) why can't it be the "indirect object" in (b), even if "its master" appears inside a prepositional phrase? After all, the overall meaning of (a) and (b) is the same.


Because "indirect object" is a syntactic, not semantic term. It has to do with structure, not meaning.


SevenDays said:


> And so perhaps "placement" is evidence that the "indirect object" is realized by a noun phrase (and not a prepositional phrase).


Exactly this. English has very rigid word order which makes determining syntax a piece of cake most of the time. In the English Verb Phrase, the Indirect Object comes before the Direct Object:

_[The noise]*S* [[gave]*V* [my wife]*IO* [a headache]*DO*]_*VP*​
That prepositional phrases aren't Indirect Objects is obvious from the fact that they cannot appear in IO's position at all. They appear in the Adjunct position, which is situated outside the Verb Phrase:

_[The noise]*S* [[gave]*V* [a headache]*DO*]*VP* [to my wife]*ADJ*_ , or​_[The noise]*S* [[gave]*V* [my wife]*IO* [a headache]*DO*]_*VP*_ [in no time]*ADJ*_​


Michael Zwingli said:


> The preposition seems to me to exist as a case marker.


In the same sense as a verb is a case marker for a direct object. Both prepositions and verbs assign syntactic case, but they aren't case markers, they're case *governers*, i.e. they stand as heads in relation to their noun complements. Case markers appear on nouns as morphological case. English doesn't mark case on nouns, other languages do.

Both verbs governing an Indirect Object, and the preposition _to,_ assign the Dative syntactic case, which is prototypically associated with the semantic _Theta Role_ of the Benefactor (here's a thread on these, probably confusing).


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## Michael Zwingli

Sobakus said:


> English has very rigid word order which makes determining syntax a piece of cake most of the time. In the English Verb Phrase, the Indirect Object comes before the Direct Object:


You throw a light on the essence of my problem: I just don't remember much of English grammar at all. Right now, I probably know more of Latin grammar than English, and that, as they say, is "f'd up".

Thanks for the good post, Sobakus!


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## billj

Michael Zwingli said:


> Yes, regarding completion, but I analyze the parts of speech a bit differently than you appear to (perhaps I am wrong). My feeling is that "_The dog gave its master the ball_" is a mere colloquialism, what may be called an example of linguistic "de-analysis" and ungrammatical in the strictest sense, used (originally informally, and now legitimized through usage) in place of the more grammatically correct (read "complete") "_The dog gave the ball to its master_". In this second sentence, the entire prepositional phrase _to its master_, and not only _its master_ represents the indirect object, the preposition only having been made necessary as a syntactic marker by the loss of inflection in the language. In fact, the only reason the preposition "to" appears in the sentence in the first place (indeed, as is the same with inflection in synthetic languages) is to indicate distransitivity in the action.



The overriding fact is that an indirect object is the complement of a verb, while the object in a PP is a complement of the preposition. And it can't be both since it's a theoretical impossibility for a constituent to have two different functions.


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## Sobakus

Michael Zwingli said:


> You throw a light on the essence of my problem: I just don't remember much of English grammar at all. Right now, I probably know more of Latin grammar than English, and that, as they say, is "f'd up".


Not at all if you ask me. Why would you as a native speaker need to know English grammar? The main benefit of learning it at school is in learning foreign languages, where explicit grammar instruction can be helpful, with traditional grammar terms serving as shorthands for linguistic structures which can be usefully compared between the two languages. Outside of this, the best thing a brain can do with explicit knowledge of English grammar is to discard it like a bad memory. This is just junk knowledge for most people - right upon finishing school I found I had no clue what a case even was, even though I could remember the mnemonic rhyme and so barely recall the names of Russian cases. Using the word “grammar” in the broad sense (including things like phonology/phonetics), my knowledge of Russian grammar has always been worse than that of English, and the latter worse than Latin. This reflects exactly how much I need to know of each in practice, and unless you're a researcher in linguistics, practicical usefulness is what motivates you to learn grammatical concepts.

Another problem is that the English/Latin/Russian grammar one learns at school is traditional grammar, which varies from passable to misleading to catastrophically inadequate for describing actual linguistic facts. One can be happy for not having been mislead about English in the same way they've been about Latin, and instead try and objecively describe the language whose facts they already know natively. Instead of parrotting the school teacher, one is free to develop one's own metacognition.


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## berndf

Michael Zwingli said:


> Well, I hope not... I should refine my post of last evening, made when I was tired from a day of sweep and mop. I don't feel that the entire prepositional phrase represents the indirect object, but just the noun of the phrase. The preposition seems to me to exist as a case marker. The reason for my feeling thusly might be because, as I said, it has been some thirty years since I have had any formal contact with English grammar (which was in "high school") but have studied Latin in recent years, so synthetic thinking is much more fresh in my mind. I do not in the least remember why things are done as they are in English prose from a syntactic perspective, and as @Hulalessar has well indicated,


I agree with with @Sobakus, the core of your problem (and you seem to agree in your #64), is the confusion of the syntactic elements with their semantic roles. Prepositional phrases (prepositional objects and prepositional adjuncts) differ from direct and indirect objects in that they are governed by prepositions which direct and indirect objects are governed directly by the verb. This is purely syntactic. Different syntactic elements can have the same semantic role but they are still different syntactic elements.


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## Michael Zwingli

billj said:


> The overriding fact is that an indirect object is the complement of a verb, while the object in a PP is a complement of the preposition. And it can't be both since it's a theoretical impossibility for a constituent to have two different functions.


I bow to the English grammarians, who undoubtedly understand more than do I. I will, with that, consider my questions initiated herein, answered.

Your allusion to 'theory' raises an interesting question in my mind. Is the grammar of each and every language merely an aggregation of theoretical analyses of linguistic conventions, which themselves arose rather intuitively? Admittedly, this is something of a philosophical question...to wit, the philosophy of language, though not one as ontologically basic as "does a proposition have existence independent of the statement thereof?" It seems an interesting one, though (actually, I find all philisophical questions interesting).


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## Hulalessar

When I read post 64 I was somewhat taken aback.

If asked I would say that in both

_The man gave his son a football_

and

_The man gave a football to his son_

“his son” is the indirect object.

I would do that on the basis that my conception of an indirect object is that it is the entity which receives what is being given or done and that in both cases “his son” is in accordance with my conception.

I first define what an indirect object is and then go on to say that there are two different ways in which it can be expressed syntactically.

It seems to me that what post 64 does is to look at the syntax first and give a name to each structure which obscures the fact that “his son” has the same function in each case.

Given that post 64 is by Sobakus I though I had better do a little research. I only needed to go into two sites to find one which supported each point of view.

Indirect Object: Explanation and Examples has this:

Paula passed the money to her mother. ("Her mother" is the indirect object. She is the recipient of the direct object, "the money.")

(Note: Sometimes, the indirect object will follow a preposition like "to" or "for.")

Indirect Objects in English (with Examples) has this:

It’s easy to get indirect objects confused with the objects of prepositions, especially when they both answer the question “who or what is receiving the direct object?” We could rewrite our example sentence above in this way:

_Embiid passed the ball to Simmons._

This is grammatically correct and has the same meaning as the original sentence. Technically speaking, though, _Simmons _is not an indirect object, but the object of an independent preposition. Same meaning, different mechanics.

The difference can be explained as a matter of approach. My view is though that the approach taken by Grammarly is misconceived, but I am open to be persuaded otherwise.


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## Sobakus

It has already been reiterated several times in this thread that the issue that gave rise to this thread, and that is reflected in Hulalessar's conception of an indirect object, is a equivocation between syntax and semantics, structure and meaning. “Indirect Object” is a term that describes syntax/structure; it can have various semantic functions, of which the canonical ones are that of the Beneficiary and the Recipient. Here's a list of semantic functions (Theta Roles) from a PDF linked to in the message linked to in #64:




Often more roles are distinguished. The various syntactic functions such as Subject, Direct Object, Indirect Object perform different roles in different contexts, generally depending on the predicate. The sum of a predicate's thematic relations is called its _argument structure;_ the older term used in a similar way is _valency_.

Equivocating the syntactic function of the Indirect Object with one of its semantic functions is like taking the semantic function of a verb as expressing an action, and then calling _am on my way_ in “I am on my way” a verb because the entire syntactic constituent expresses an action, or calling the deverbal noun _coronation_ a verb because it expresses an action, and has a logical subject (Agent) and a logical object (Patient). The correct term in both cases would be “predicate”, and belongs to the logical-semantic domain.

Such a equivocation may be relatively harmless when used to explain basic concepts in informal terms, as grammar-monster.com does. It might have been usual at a time before linguists arrived at the concept of thematic relations. But this thread is an example of how it can be detrimental to correct understanding of grammatical phenomena, especially now that proper terminology exists to describe semantics in abstraction from syntax.

Generally, when one sees that a source of information makes a distinction that another, clearly informal source of information does not, and accompanies this with the words “technically speaking”, it's safe to assume that the source that makes the distinction is correct and the source that doesn't is committing an informal equivocation that should be avoided in any sort of technically-minded discussion.


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## Michael Zwingli

Hulalessar said:


> If asked I would say that in both
> 
> _The man gave his son a football_
> 
> and
> 
> _The man gave a football to his son_
> 
> “his son” is the indirect object.





Sobakus said:


> “Indirect Object” is a term that describes syntax/structure; it can have various semantic functions...


This is certainly a bit of a "hairy" impasse. My understanding, as it seems with @Hulalessar, has always been that an indirect object was not as syntactically bound or determined as Sobakus suggests, but rather, that it is determined by functioning as a third, passive, party to the verbal action. Under this definition, an indirect object is semantically, rather than syntactically determined. My thought about this is enunciated in the following Wiktionary page:

dative case - Wiktionary

This seems to indicate that an indirect object can inhabit that sentence in more than one way: either preceding the direct object in the predicate, or following the direct object as part of a prepositional phrase/adjunct, and that the only difference between these is whether the indirect object or the direct object (respectively) is to be emphasized by the speaker/writer.



Sobakus said:


> Equivocating the syntactic function of the Indirect Object with one of its semantic functions is like taking the semantic function of a verb as expressing an action, and then calling _am on my way_ in “I am on my way” a verb because the entire syntactic constituent expresses an action



@Sobakus seems to be thinking about this on a "higher" level than I ever have...applying a more sophisticated type of grammatical analyais, a level at which I may be unqualified to discourse without further, deeper study.


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## Sobakus

Wiktionary's definition is only true in a very technical sense (where “case” stands for an abstract syntactic feature – again, *not semantic*), but is complete nonsense in the sense that 99% of people will understand it. English has no morphological Dative case. One would do better if they take a look at Wiktionary's definition of the Indirect Object, where it states that these are a *grammatical role of a ditransitive verb,* or in other words, it's a *core argument of the verb expressed by a Noun Phrase.* A Prepositional Phrase is not a core argument of the verb by definition, and it's not a Noun Phrase (again, by definition), but contains a Noun Phrase in it. Quoth Huddleston & Pullum 2002, _the Cambridge Grammar o.t.E.l.:_



And, a few pages later:



Huddleston & Pullum's examples an argumentation are repeated in G. Brůhová's doctoral thesis at page 16 and following (also in case the moderators are worried about the images violating copyright).


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## Michael Zwingli

Haha, I guess, @Sobakus, that you've studied a bit of grammar in your day? I'm impressed.


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## Sobakus

In other thoughts, the confusion between syntactic subject/object and logical subject/object is perfectly explicable, as the latter two are some of the most fundamental concepts of logic. It has always been my understanding that even when people equivocate them, they nevertheless understand that this is what they're doing as a matter of expediency, and aren't oblivious to the fundamental difference between the two. This is, for example, what's going on in my message here. But to my knowledge, logic has no such concept as “indirect object”, and the prototypical semantic function of the grammatical indirect object would be referred to as “recipient” in logic, the same term used to describe the corresponding thematic role.

For this reason this particular equivocation is surprising to me, as is people's insensitivity to the fact that they're committing it.


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## Sobakus

Michael Zwingli said:


> Haha, I guess, @Sobakus, that you've studied a bit of grammar in your day? I'm impressed.


I would really recommend you get a grammar like Huddleston & Pullum if you wish to get relatively up-to-date on English grammar as informed by the generative tradition, and the terminology involved. For Latin, Oniga & Schifano's _Latin: A Linguistic Introduction_ seems to be the only thing in existence, and it's not what you'd call either comprehensive or especially beginner-friendly, but I think it should work when one is already familiar with the relevant concepts as used to describe English.


----------



## Michael Zwingli

@Sobakus, you are threatening the world order. English is supposed to be the easy class, and differential equations the more difficult. Now, I'm not so sure...


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## Hulalessar

Modern linguistics has been beneficial as it has corrected many misconceived notions and clarified much. In the process, however, it has brought in new obfuscations. In particular it has kept some old terms but assigned new meanings to them by narrowing or expanding what they cover, which causes confusion. More generally, it has acquired a philosophical emphasis which searches for universality. That has lead to a reluctance to accept concepts which may only be applicable to some languages. It suggests that if there is a universal grammar, a feature of any given language must somehow must be present in every language if only you look hard enough. So, if, for example, Japanese can properly be described as a topic/comment language then a topic/comment analysis is appropriate for English. It may be if you want to find out what is going on in the synapses of the brain (which is ultimately what universal grammar is about) but not if you want a practical explanation of how English is put together.

It may be that language, and indeed all human activity, is ultimately reducible to mathematics, logic and 1-0, but I have to doubt it will ever be proved. It is just part of the great mystery of how the sum of the parts is different from the whole. Any natural language is a convention which has emerged and I do not see it being susceptible to any sort of logical analysis because any logic applicable has to be so fuzzy as to be impenetrable. I am inclined to agree with the late Jonathan Miller who said that if humans understood how their minds worked they would not be able to function.

There are of course certain universals applicable to human experience: Things move; things do things and have things done to them; things happened yesterday and are expected to happen tomorrow. All languages are capable of expressing those basic experiences, they just do them in all sorts of different ways. What is required to be expressed in one language may be left unexpressed in another without any loss of meaning.

Anyone describing a language needs to have some methodology, but the terms in which it is described need to be appropriate.


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## Michael Zwingli

Hulalessar said:


> It may be if you want to find out what is going on in the synapses of the brain (which is ultimately what universal grammar is about) but not if you want a practical explanation of how English is put together. [...] if humans understood how their minds worked they would not be able to function.


Is this an area of study for cognitive scientists, men like Steven Pinker and, perhaps, Doug Hofstadter?

There appears to be a certain profundity to the Miller quote you indicate. I think (if I understand you correctly) that Cal Berkeley mathematician Alfred Tarsky touched upon the theme of the "fuzzy logic" involved in language in his paper "_The Concept of Truth in Formalized Languages"_, which can be found in the compilation entitled _Logic, Semantics, Metamathematics: Papers from 1923 to 1938._ Good reading, but hard if one lacks a solid grounding in maths.


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## Hulalessar

I recall someone, I forget who and he may not have been serious, saying he had two volumes on his bookshelf: _The Mathematical Basis of Logic_ and _The Logical Basis of Mathematics_. I am not one of those who believes that a knowledge of mathematics is essential for wisdom, probably because I was never very good at mathematics. I have no objection to ideas being explored to see where they go because that is just being human, but it can lead up blind alleys and to Cicero's dictum that there is nothing so ridiculous that some philosopher has not said it.

My feeling about the social sciences in general is that they aim to be rigorous when their subject matter is not susceptible to rigorous analysis because there are too many variables. A lot can be reduced to common sense, but the problem with common sense is that it is unreliable because some things are counterintuitive. The social sciences have a valuable role to play, but I would like them to be a bit less rigorous in their approach and not worry about what they do being labelled "not proper science".


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## Hulalessar

berndf said:


> Obviously, in
> _He ran into his neighbour and
> He ran his own company,_
> the verbs _run+direct object_ and _run+into+NP_ have different meanings.


If "he ran into" means "he collided with" then "into" is a preposition governing "his neighbour" which is not a direct object but part of the adverbial phrase "into his neighbour".

If "he ran into" means "he encountered" then "into" is a particle forming part of the phrasal verb "run into" and "his neighbour" is a direct object.


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## Michael Zwingli

Hulalessar said:


> Cicero's dictum that there is nothing so ridiculous that some philosopher has not said it.


Is this from _De Divinatione_?


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## Hulalessar

Michael Zwingli said:


> Is this from _De Divinatione_?


Sic est:_ Nihil tam absurde dici potest quod non dicatur ab aliquo philosophorum._


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## Michael Zwingli

Hulalessar said:


> _The Mathematical Basis of Logic.. _


This sounds like a text on what is called "formal logic",



Hulalessar said:


> ...and _The Logical Basis of Mathematics._


and this sounds like the title of a text on number theory.

Anything and everything that one might want to know about "the logical basis of maths" one can get from Russell and Whitehead's _Principia_ (which has that as its subject matter), if one is versed in the symbology of formal logic, and can follow the dense reasoning (I don't pretend at all...).


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## Michael Zwingli

Hulalessar said:


> Sic est..._._


Ita pensabam.


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## berndf

Hulalessar said:


> If "he ran into" means "he collided with" then "into" is a preposition governing "his neighbour" which is not a direct object but part of the adverbial phrase "into his neighbour".
> 
> If "he ran into" means "he encountered" then "into" is a particle forming part of the phrasal verb "run into" and "his neighbour" is a direct object.


Syntactically it is the same. Semantically, the latter meaning is a figurative use of the former.

This needs to be distinguished from phrasal verbs constructed with a preposition as a detached part of the verb as in
_He handed in his resignation._
These kind of phrasal verbs are to be analysed differently also syntactically because the preposition does not govern the object (neither syntactically nor semantically; _in_ does not refer to the resignation but to an unspecified place which is the target of the action). In these kind of phrasal verbs usually allow bracketing the object (at least with pronomial objects):
_He handed it in_,
whereas
_*He ran him into_
would not be possible (or, if it where possible, would mean something completely different).


----------



## billj

Hulalessar said:


> If "he ran into" means "he collided with" then "into" is a preposition governing "his neighbour" which is not a direct object but part of the adverbial phrase "into his neighbour".
> 
> If "he ran into" means "he encountered" then "into" is a particle forming part of the phrasal verb "run into" and "his neighbour" is a direct object.



There's no grammatical difference between the two. In both cases, "run" is a prepositional verb in that it selects "into". "His neighbour" is not direct object of "run" in the second one.

"Into his neighbour" is not an adjunct (your adverbial phrase), but a PP (preposition phrase) functioning as complement of "run", where the PP indicates a goal, i.e. "his neighbour".

Goal and source PPs clearly qualify as complements since they need to be licensed by the verb - normally a verb of motion.

Incidentally, I'd avoid the term 'phrasal verb'. It's misleading. It's not the whole expression "run into" that is a verb, but just the lexeme "run".


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## berndf

billj said:


> Incidentally, I'd avoid the term 'phrasal verb'. It's misleading. It's not the whole expression "run into" that is a verb, but just the lexeme "run".


These kind of uses are lumped into the category of _phrasal verbs_ mainly in English as a second language teaching because it has an idiomatic meaning that cannot trivially be deduced by literal analysis. In examples like the one I mentioned above I would consider the concept useful although also there it is primarily used in English as a second language teaching.


----------



## Forero

Hulalessar said:


> If "he ran into" means "he collided with" then "into" is a preposition governing "his neighbour" which is not a direct object but part of the adverbial phrase "into his neighbour".
> 
> If "he ran into" means "he encountered" then "into" is a particle forming part of the phrasal verb "run into" and "his neighbour" is a direct object.


Actually, one of the meanings of _into_, the preposition, is (according to the WR dictionary):


> 3. to a point of contact with;​against:​ He accidentally backed his truck into a parked car.​


"Encountered" is just a figurative use of "ran into" = "ran to a point of contact with".

There is no need to hypothesize so many phrasal verbs (run into, bump into, plow headlong into, etc.).


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## Michael Zwingli

Forero said:


> There is no need to hypothesize so many phrasal verbs (run into, bump into, plow headlong into, etc.).


Hmm...I don't view this as hypothesis, but rather as fact. The verbs "to run into"/"bump into" = "to encounter", "to plow headlong into"= "to collide (with)". Such verbal constructions are, in my view (admittedly not the view of an historical linguist), all part and parcel of the ongoing colloquialization of written English, which itself is based upon the vulgarization of literacy in Western societies which began following the Enlightenment. The older, formal/learned literary verbs (those _lemmas_ which have Indo-European roots) are now often viewed as pretentious, and the invention/adoption of phrasal verbs may, I think, be viewed in part as a rejection, even a denunciation by bourgeois people, of what they consider to have been pre-Enlightenment "upper class" pretense. Similar developments have occurred throughout our speech, and then our writing. If I had written "...not the view of a historical linguist..." above, I might be wrong by the strictest grammatical standards, but the statement would not be rejected as ungrammatical by many, including most college professors; "a home", "a habit", and "a history" are accepted indicative constructs today, and are certainly read more often in the media than "an home", "an habit", and "an history", are they not? With the continuing colloquialization of speech and writing, such "phrasalization", such substitution of phrases for lexemes, has occurred not only with verbs, but with other parts of speech as well. Think of how often here in the U.S. you hear young folks saying "for real" instead of "certainly", "really" or "truly". I can't say that I appreciate that one very much, but the point is that in the phrase "for real", "for" has no independent existence as a preposition...it is simply a constituent part of an adverb. @berndf appears right when he indicates that these types of construct frustrate efforts at grammatical analysis in any other way.

 I will add that to me, much of this "rejection of perceived pretense and formality" is a bit unfortunate, as an example of "throwing out the baby with the bath water", but...this is just me rambling.


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## berndf

Michael Zwingli said:


> Hmm...I don't view this as hypothesis, but rather as fact. The verbs "to run into"/"bump into" = "to encounter", "to plow headlong into"= "to collide (with)".


Their _meanings_ are fact. Re-interpretation of their syntax is theorising and I agree with @Forero that it often is unnecessary theorising. It is totally sufficient to analyse them as idiomatic/figurative uses of the base verbs.


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## bearded

Michael Zwingli said:


> following the Enlightenment.


Could you please elaborate a little bit?  Is it a sure thing that the Enlightenment was the ''turning point''?


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## Michael Zwingli

bearded said:


> Could you please elaborate a little bit?  Is it a sure thing that the Enlightenment was the ''turning point''?


I view the orgy of philosophical discourse which attended the Enlightenment, and moreso the "Enlightenment thought", the schools of thought which were its product, as having provided the philosophical basis for the individualism, personal independence and self-direction which (along with a technological explosion, and various political revolutions) are the hallmarks of the modern West. Without the thinking of Voltaire, Rousseau, Locke, Bacon, et.al., there would have been no conceptual basis upon which these qualities might have found expression. The modes of expression which are our subject are the verbal heirs of these schools of thought.


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## Hulalessar

billj said:


> It's not the whole expression "run into" that is a verb, but just the lexeme "run".


English can sometimes be tricky to analyse. I would consider the verb to be "run into" because in "I encountered Mr Smith" "encountered" can be replaced by "ran into" and because I can say "You'll never believe who I ran into". I would say that "encounter" and "run into" are equivalent semantic units and that in "I ran into Mr Smith" "into" is not a preposition which governs Mr Smith but a particle.


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## Forero

"You'll never believe who I encountered" does not even sound natural to me, let alone equivalent to "You'll never believe who I ran into."


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## Michael Zwingli

Forero said:


> "You'll never believe who I encountered" does not even sound natural to me...


I think that this is simply a function of common usage. To use "encountered" in that context would be against normal modern speech patterns, especially here in the U.S. Nevertheless, the statement "you'll never guess who I encountered at the grocery store" is a perfectly grammatical sentence. Again, we live in the age not only of aquarius, information and technical wonders, but also of of vulgarity...the triumph of commonality. In another time and place, and especially among people who harbored pretensions to things like "propriety", "excellence", and even perhaps "superiority", such a usage would undoubtedly find common expression. I note as well that in other Indo-European languages which do not allow for such ready usage of phrasal verbs, "to encounter" is the verb that would be used: "_Nunca adivinarás con quién me *encontré* en el mercado_".


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## berndf

Hulalessar said:


> English can sometimes be tricky to analyse. I would consider the verb to be "run into" because in "I encountered Mr Smith" "encountered" can be replaced by "ran into" and because I can say "You'll never believe who I ran into". I would say that "encounter" and "run into" are equivalent semantic units and that in "I ran into Mr Smith" "into" is not a preposition which governs Mr Smith but a particle.


There are practically always different ways to express the same thing with different syntactic structures. The fact that two expressions are semantically equivalent or near-equivalent says strictly nothing about the syntactic structure of any of the two expressions.


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## Hulalessar

berndf said:


> There are practically always different ways to express the same thing with different syntactic structures. The fact that two expressions are semantically equivalent or near-equivalent says strictly nothing about the syntactic structure of any of the two expressions.


But what if you start your analysis by looking at verbs? You see that "encounter" and "run into" are semantically equivalent and so decide to give them the same label: verb. You then distinguish been "one-part verbs" and "multi-part verbs". You can have the same problem with nouns. In "It's a try on" is the noun "try" or "try on"? If it is "try" what is "on"? "Try on" is written as two words, but "workout" (as a noun) as one, but that is merely orthographic convention. Both are identical in form, but would they be analysed differently?

Words which function as prepositions also have other functions and sometimes you puzzle over what is going on. In "Which table shall I put the flowers on?" what is "on"? You could say "On which table shall I put the flowers ?" which sort of suggests that in the first sentence "on" is displaced preposition. Are the two sentences syntactically the same? If you say they are not, are you not saying that word order in English is _always _critical in determining syntactic structure?


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## Hulalessar

Forero said:


> "You'll never believe who I encountered" does not even sound natural to me.


Quite right. Should be: "You'll never believe whom I encountered."


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## berndf

Hulalessar said:


> But what if you start your analysis by looking at verbs? You see that "encounter" and "run into" are semantically equivalent and so decide to give them the same label: verb. You then distinguish been "one-part verbs" and "multi-part verbs". You can have the same problem with nouns. In "It's a try on" is the noun "try" or "try on"? If it is "try" what is "on"? "Try on" is written as two words, but "workout" (as a noun) as one, but that is merely orthographic convention. Both are identical in form, but would they be analysed differently?


Did you see what I wrote earlier?


berndf said:


> Syntactically it is the same. Semantically, the latter meaning [to encounter] is a figurative use of the former [the literal meaning of _run into_].
> 
> *This needs to be distinguished* from phrasal verbs constructed with a preposition as a detached part of the verb as in
> _He handed in his resignation._
> These kind of phrasal verbs are to be analysed differently also syntactically because the preposition does not govern the object (neither syntactically nor semantically; _in_ does not refer to the resignation but to an unspecified place which is the target of the action). In these kind of phrasal verbs usually allow bracketing the object (at least with pronomial objects):
> _He handed it in_,
> whereas
> _*He ran him into_
> would not be possible (or, if it where possible, would mean something completely different).


Your example _try on _belongs to this category of phrasal verbs, where prepositions are indeed used like adverbs.


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## Hulalessar

berndf said:


> Your example _try on _belongs to this category of phrasal verbs, where prepositions are indeed used like adverbs.


But I was asking about "try on" as a noun.


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## Forero

Michael Zwingli said:


> I think that this is simply a function of common usage. To use "encountered" in that context would be against normal modern speech patterns, especially here in the U.S. Nevertheless, the statement "you'll never guess who I encountered at the grocery store" is a perfectly grammatical sentence. Again, we live in the age not only of aquarius, information and technical wonders, but also of of vulgarity...the triumph of commonality. In another time and place, and especially among people who harbored pretensions to things like "propriety", "excellence", and even perhaps "superiority", such a usage would undoubtedly find common expression. I note as well that in other Indo-European languages which do not allow for such ready usage of phrasal verbs, "to encounter" is the verb that would be used: "_Nunca adivinarás con quién me *encontré* en el mercado_".


My point was that "run into" and "encounter" are not semantic equivalents. Neither are "Encounter", "encontrar", and "encontrarse" (or any 2 of the 3).

On the other hand, "the person into whom I ran on the way to work" does not seem equivalent to "the person I ran into on the way to work", and that does suggest that proximity to the verb "ran" affects the meaning of "into".

The same goes for proximity to lots of other verbs: "run", "bump", "plow", "slam", "charge", "fly", "crash", "ram", "walk headlong", etc.

Does that mean we have to tell non-native learners of English that there just happen to be who-knows-how-many verb + "into" combinations (and, for example, verb + "right into", verb + "directly into", and verb + "headlong into" combinations) that have to be memorized separately?

It makes more sense to me to say that "into" sometimes means "to a point of contact with; against" and let their own disambiguation skills take over, including the ability to recognize onomatopoeia and figurative language.


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## Michael Zwingli

Forero said:


> It makes more sense to me to say that "into" sometimes means "to a point of contact with; against" ..


Yes, precisely! But....



Hulalessar said:


> Words which function as prepositions also have other functions..


...such as adverbials.

I view "into" to be acting more as an adverbial particle modifying the verb "run", and the whole representing a "phrasal verb" indicating the action "to terminate my running against", or in other words, "to meet". Following that, "to run into" is a direct synonym of "to encounter", and a primary translation of Spanish "_encontrar_", no? Another would be "to come across", a similar phrasal verb with an adverbial preposition: encontrar - Wiktionary 
In phrases like "run headlong into", the verb "run" is further modified to give the suggestion of great force, as in "the runaway train ran headlong into a parked train engine at the railyard". That is how I analyses these structures...perhaps I am wrong?


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## Forero

Michael Zwingli said:


> Yes, precisely! But....
> 
> 
> ...such as adverbials.
> 
> I view "into" to be acting more as an adverbial particle modifying the verb "run", and the whole representing a "phrasal verb" indicating the action "to terminate my running against", or in other words, "to meet". Following that, "to run into" is a direct synonym of "to encounter", and a primary translation of Spanish "_encontrar_", no? Another would be "to come across", a similar phrasal verb with an adverbial preposition: encontrar - Wiktionary
> In phrases like "run headlong into", the verb "run" is further modified to give the suggestion of great force, as in "the runaway train ran headlong into a parked train engine at the railyard". That is how I analyses these structures...perhaps I am wrong?


I think "into" has to remain a preposition. It still requires an object, just like "against", and just like "to", "of", and "with" in "to a point of contact with".

"Encontrar" might sometimes mean "encounter", in the sense of discovering a problem or obstacle, but its primary translation is more like "find" or "come across". It is also used for seeing or meeting another person or for two lines meeting or converging.

For the meaning "run into", you need the combination you used in your example: _encontrarse con_.

Curiously, both "encontrar" and "encounter" come from Latin "en-" (in, on, into, onto, etc.) and "contra" (against/counter to).


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## Michael Zwingli

Forero said:


> I think "into" has to remain a preposition. It still requires an object, just like "against", and just like "to", "of", and "with" in "to a point of contact with".


It is possible to analyze it in that way, but I rarher think that "who" is the object of the verb "ran into". Different ways of viewing the same sentence, I think. I am not sure that there is a definitive way to analyze this, unless you have the grammatical chops of berndf or Sobakus, which I do not.



Forero said:


> "Encontrar" might sometimes mean "encounter", in the sense of discovering a problem or obstacle, but its primary translation is more like "find" or "come across".


The primary meaning is "to meet" (a friend, an enemy, the love of one's life, etc.)



Forero said:


> For the meaning "run into", you need the combination you used in your example: _encontrarse con._


So true!

*EDIT*: I might characterize the essential question here as whether or not one might say that _usage_ can effect changes in the syntax of sentences, as it does in the semantics of words, causing a type of "syntactic drift" over time.


----------



## billj

Hulalessar said:


> English can sometimes be tricky to analyse. I would consider the verb to be "run into" because in "I encountered Mr Smith" "encountered" can be replaced by "ran into" and because I can say "You'll never believe who I ran into". I would say that "encounter" and "run into" are equivalent semantic units and that in "I ran into Mr Smith" "into" is not a preposition which governs Mr Smith but a particle.



I wouldn't go along with what you say.

_I ran into Mr Smith.

"_Ran into ..." may form a constituent, but it is not a constituent at word level: it's a verb phrase.

Verb is a word category, like noun, adjective, etc., and it's "ran" that is a verb: this is the word that takes verbal inflections. So we have (a) but not (b):

(a) _I ran into Mr Smith_.
(b)* _I run intoed Mr Smith_.

Thus, in (a) "ran" is a verb and "into Mr Smith" is a preposition phrase functioning as complement of "ran".


----------



## Michael Zwingli

billj said:


> _"_Ran into ..." may form a constituent, but it is not a constituent at word level: it's a verb phrase.
> 
> Verb is a word category...and it's "ran" that is a verb...


Yes , all you say is true. However, can we not consider that since "ran into" is the verb phrase in question, that "into" is not serving in the role of a participle, but rather as an adverbial modifying the verb "ran"? For instance, as "_ran quickly_" describes "a running of great swiftness", cannot "_ran into_" represent a coordinate verbal describing "a running up against"? In that, can we not consider that "to run into" is represents a verb with a distinct and different semantic quality than does the verb "to run"?


----------



## billj

Michael Zwingli said:


> Yes , all you say is true. However, can we not consider that since "ran into" is the verb phrase in question, that "into" is not serving in the role of a participle, but rather as an adverbial modifying the verb "ran"? For instance, as "_ran quickly_" describes "a running of great swiftness", cannot "_ran into_" represent a coordinate verbal describing "a running up against"? In that, can we not consider that "to run into" is represents a verb with a distinct and different semantic quality than does the verb "to run"?



Context and complementation determine the meaning, of course.

I would avoid using the term 'particle' here. "Into" belongs to the category (POS)  'preposition' and its function here is that of complement of  "ran". 

Syntactically, "ran into x" is a verb phrase where "into" is a fully-fledged preposition heading the PP "into x" functioning as complement of "ran".

In that example, "ran" selects the preposition "into" for that meaning of "ran" ('encounter'), so we call "ran" a prepositional verb here, avoiding the misleading term 'phrasal verb'. The structure is thus verb – [prep+O].


----------



## berndf

Hulalessar said:


> But I was asking about "try on" as a noun.


The noun _try-on_ is obviously a nominalisation of the verb.


----------



## Hulalessar

berndf said:


> The noun _try-on_ is obviously a nominalisation of the verb.


So the verb is "try on".


----------



## berndf

Hulalessar said:


> So the verb is "try on".


Yes, to repeat, phrasal verbs like _hand in, try on_, etc. are fundamentally different from constructs like _run into something or someone_, whatever its meaning, literal or figurative.


berndf said:


> berndf said:
> 
> 
> 
> Syntactically it is the same. Semantically, the latter meaning [to encounter] is a figurative use of the former [the literal meaning of _run into_].
> 
> *This needs to be distinguished* from phrasal verbs constructed with a preposition as a detached part of the verb as in
> _He handed in his resignation._
> These kind of phrasal verbs are to be analysed differently also syntactically because the preposition does not govern the object (neither syntactically nor semantically; _in_ does not refer to the resignation but to an unspecified place which is the target of the action). In these kind of phrasal verbs usually allow bracketing the object (at least with pronomial objects):
> _He handed it in_,
> whereas
> _*He ran him into_
> would not be possible (or, if it where possible, would mean something completely different).
> 
> 
> 
> Your example _try on _belongs to this category of phrasal verbs, where prepositions are indeed used like adverbs.
Click to expand...

_Run into = encounter _fails 4 of the 5 tests here for phrasal verbs and the only one it passes is a semantic and not a syntactic one.


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## billj

Hulalessar said:


> So the verb is "try on".



Syntactically, no. 

As I said in #106 (!), it's just "try" that is a verb, not "try on". At word level, "on" is a separate constituent, a preposition functioning as complement of "try". It's "try" that takes verbal inflections.


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## Michael Zwingli

billj said:


> Context and complementation determine the meaning, of course.


Yes...yes, but as you say:



billj said:


> Context and complementation determine the meaning, of course.


So, it does not always hold that,


billj said:


> The structure is thus verb – [prep+O]



Let us take the two example sentences:

_(1) While driving *my car*, I *ran into the ditch*.

(2) Whilst shopping of a Tuesday, I *ran into Robert* at the store._

I agree that for (1), it holds that "the structure is thus _verb – [prep+ complement]_", with "the ditch" being the complement of the preposition "into", and the direct object of the verb "ran" being "my car". I argue, however, that for (2), the structure is _verb - odject,_ with said "Robert" being the direct object of the verb "ran into", and here the direct object is the unstated "myself". In this sentence, "into" seems not to act prepositionally, but rather as a modifier of the verb "ran". In both, "into" is a preposition inasmuch as they show direction, but the difference lies in how that preposition relates to the other words in the sentence. In (1), "into" is separable and separate from the verb "to run", and is more closely related to it's complement "the ditch", while in (2) "into" is inseparable from "ran" without changing the meaning of both "ran" and the entire sentence. In (2), the very meaning of the verb is different from what it is in (1), due to the usage and influence of the preposition; in (1), "into" acts as a true preposition and adheres to "the ditch", and in (2) it acts as an adverb and adheres to the verb "ran". True, "particle" is not a good term for the preposition in (2), but how about "adverbial preposition"?


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## berndf

Michael Zwingli said:


> True, "particle" is not a good term for the preposition in (2), but how about "adverbial preposition"?


I really don't understand why one would go through such pain to develop a new category of particles when the analysis as a figurative use is completely satisfactory. _Run into = encounter_ has none of the syntactic characteristics of a phrasal verb (see #111 above, especially the link there) and the interpretation relies solely on semantic equivalence.


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## Forero

The verb _run_ has multiple possible meanings, and the preposition _into_ has multiple possible meanings. Which meaning is intended depends on the whole context:

_While driving my car, I ran into the ditch.
While driving my car, I ran into a wall.
While driving my car, I ran into Robert.

While shopping one Tuesday, I ran into the ditch.
While shopping one Tuesday, I ran into a wall.
While shopping one Tuesday, I ran into Robert._

As I see it, running into the ditch tends to involve entering the ditch, but running into a wall or a person is different. That does not have to change the meaning of _run_.

Running into Robert, especially when shopping and not driving, can be taken either literally or figuratively.


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## bearded

Forero said:


> Running into Robert, especially when shopping and not driving, can be taken either literally or figuratively.


If taken literally, what would ''running into Robert'' mean? Perhaps bumping into him? colliding against him?


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## Hulalessar

Forero said:


> The verb _run_ has multiple possible meanings etc


The way I look at it is this:

We take the basic meaning of "run" to involve the idea of moving quickly. In: "I saw that old bore Fred Ford coming towards me so I ran into a shop" we have the basic idea involved. We can safely say that "into" is a preposition governing "a shop". Instead of "ran into" we could have "nipped into", "dashed into", "scurried into" and dozens of other things. No one will suggest that any of the alternatives are phrasal verbs and so neither in this sentence is "run into". (We may though note that on uttering the sentence someone may ask: "Which shop did you run into?" and then puzzle what precise role "into" is playing."

In: "I ran into Fred Ford" (assuming it is not meant literally) the idea of moving quickly is absent and the idea is removed by the word "into" as "run" and "into" form a unit. That is why I would say that in both "I ran into Fred Ford" and "I encountered Fred Ford" the direct object is "Fred Ford". If you say that in the former "Fred Ford" is not the direct object then you are defining what a direct object is by form rather than function.

I had a look at this page: The History of Phrasal Verbs. Four of the five tests are followed by a "however" and the fifth (stress) is not really reliable. The writer is more or less admitting that phrasal verbs present difficulties in analysis. I think that is in part because English is highly analytic with strong isolating tendencies. It is difficult sometimes to identify precisely what is going on. Whilst I think English is difficult to pin down that does not mean we should not make the effort to make sense of it. The important thing is that it works fine.


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## berndf

Hulalessar said:


> We may though note that on uttering the sentence someone may ask: "Which shop did you run into?" and then puzzle what precise role "into" is playing."


Ordinary preposition stranding (_Which country are you from?_ _What are you talking about?_): more precisely: _wh_-movement.


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## Michael Zwingli

Forero said:


> Running into Robert, especially when shopping and not driving, can be taken either literally or figuratively.


Yes, absolutely. The usual meaning of "I ran into Robert", though (so long as the context dies not involve a football or other sports match), is "I met Robert", and not "I collided with Robert.


Forero said:


> Running into Robert, especially when shopping and not driving, can be taken either literally or figuratively.


Yes as well, but ibid.


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## Michael Zwingli

bearded said:


> If taken literally, what would ''running into Robert'' mean? Perhaps bumping into him? colliding against him?


Yes, this would be the literal, non-idiomatic meaning. The idiomatic meaning, "I met Robert", however, is much more commonly heard in non-specific contexts.


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## Michael Zwingli

Hulalessar said:


> I would say that in both "I ran into Fred Ford" and "I encountered Fred Ford" the direct object is "Fred Ford".


100%, and I view this insight as the key to the puzzle. If "Fred Ford" is the DO, and the meaning is "I met him", then "ran into" must be the verbal unit, as there is no other role for "into" to take apart from verbal modifier.


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## berndf

Michael Zwingli said:


> 100%, and I view this insight as the key to the puzzle.


There is no puzzle. It is simply confusion of syntax and semantics.


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## Forero

bearded said:


> If taken literally, what would ''running into Robert'' mean? Perhaps bumping into him? colliding against him?


Probably.


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## Michael Zwingli

berndf said:


> There is no puzzle. It is simply confusion of syntax and semantics.


Yes, but if normal/traditional syntax may be changed by usage as a type of "syntactic drift" (as are word semantics), then which syntax are we discussing? I wonder if this is what is happening has happened here.


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## berndf

Michael Zwingli said:


> Yes, but if normal/traditional syntax may be changed by usage as a type of "syntactic drift" (as are word semantics), then which syntax are we discussing? I wonder if this is what is happening.


What "syntactic drift". I don't quite understand.


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## Michael Zwingli

berndf said:


> What "syntactic drift". I don't quite understand.


Well, when the meaning of words can change over time as an effect of usage, it is sometimes called "semantic drift". If usage can likewise effect normal syntax for particular types of construction, then...


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## berndf

Then what? Semantic drift has nothing to do with syntax. Apart from that, figurative uses are not quite the same thing as semantic drift.


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## Michael Zwingli

berndf said:


> Semantic drift has nothing to do with syntax.


No, not at all. However, what I am suggesting, rather, is more of a concomitancy, What I suggest, is that (perhaps) a hypothetical "syntactic drift" might accompany semantic drift within a language as a coordinate phenomenon, both the result of changing syntactic and semantic usages, respectively, over time.


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## Hulalessar

berndf said:


> There is no puzzle. It is simply confusion of syntax and semantics.


I think the problem in this thread is different ideas of what people mean by "syntax".

My approach goes something like this:

In both:

_Mary gave the book to John_

and 
_
Mary gave John the book_

John is presented as the recipient of the book in a sentence with an active verb. I give a name to the role of a recipient in an active sentence: indirect object. I say that in both sentences "John" is the indirect object. If someone objects and says but the syntax is different in each case, I will agree, but say that the syntax of English allows an indirect object to expressed in two different ways which is not confusing semantics with syntax. To put it another way, in my concept of syntax I give a name to function rather than form.

I see this as similar to possession which can also be expressed in two ways in English:

_John's book_

and

_The book of John_

I would say that both sentences indicate that John owns the book and I see no reason why in the first I should refer to John as "the possessor" and in the second by some phrase involving the word "preposition."

Many years ago I read a book which divided what in traditional grammar are called adjectives into "adjectives" and "adjectivals", the former referring to words which can be inflected by adding "-er" and "-est" and the latter which cannot. It is a severe case of emphasising form at the expense of function and as bad as describing "weak" verbs as "verbs" and "strong" verbs as "verbals".


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## Michael Zwingli

Hulalessar said:


> In both:
> 
> _Mary gave the book to John_
> 
> and
> 
> _Mary gave John the book_
> 
> John is presented as the recipient of the book in a sentence with an active verb. I give a name to the role of a recipient in an active sentence: indirect object. I say that in both sentences "John" is the indirect object.


I agree with this. Moreover, even of we change the word order of your first example a bit, so.that it reads, _Mary gave to John a book_, John remains an indirect object. However, this example is quite different from our example above_, I ran into Robert at the store._ because in this sentence Robert is the direct object, that which is acted upon by the subject. This indicates that in that sentence, into is not acting as a preposition introducing a prepositional phrase, but rather as a modifier of the verb _to run_. That is the analysis of this dummy, at least.


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## berndf

Hulalessar said:


> I think the problem in this thread is different ideas of what people mean by "syntax".


Not really. The terms are quite well defined and your talk about semantics and not about syntax. Things like "possessor" are semantic and not syntactic categories. Same with verb valences. Syntactic categories are things like _subject_ and _object_. Things like _agent, patient_ or _beneficiary_ are semantic categories.


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## Hulalessar

Michael Zwingli said:


> I agree with this. Moreover, even of we change the word order of your first example a bit, so.that it reads, _Mary gave to John a book_, John remains an indirect object. However, this example is quite different from our example above_, I ran into Robert at the store._ because in this sentence Robert is the direct object, that which is acted upon by the subject. This indicates that in that sentence, into is not acting as a preposition introducing a prepositional phrase, but rather as a modifier of the verb _to run_. That is the analysis of this dummy, at least.


I totally agree. I suppose though that in the end it all comes down to how you look at things and what the purpose of the analysis is. I quote from the Wikipedia article on syntax: "There are numerous approaches to syntax that differ in their central assumptions and goals."

Analyses made for didactic purposes are somewhat decried in this thread, but if they are useful they must have something going for them.

Language generally is difficult to pin down because it is complex. Every natural language is a system which has evolved and, somehow or other, its native speakers master it at a surprisingly early stage in their development. I remain to be convinced that any rigorous system can fully explain any language. I am inclined to think that a language like English, which is highly analytical with strong isolating tendencies, does not readily lend itself to being parcelled up neatly, not that any language can be completely worked out. If we think we understand language we are saying we understand how mental processes work, and we are a long way off from that.


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## Forero

_He ran his car over the curb, across a bean field, and right into a tree._

The direct object in this sentence is "his car", not "a tree". Right?


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## Michael Zwingli

Hulalessar said:


> Language generally is difficult to pin down because it is complex. Every natural language is a system which has evolved...


Yes. The set of ways in which words can be combined in English (and I assume in all languages) to render different meanings is quite extensive. It seems that in certain combinatorial forms, words can assume functions which deviate from those subsumed by their normal parts of speech.


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## Michael Zwingli

Forero said:


> The direct object in this sentence is "his car", not "a tree". Right?


Yes.


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