From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar
[mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf
Of Scott Woods
Sent: Tuesday, November 28, 2006
9:37 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Prepositional phrase
as an indirect object/a suggested resolution
It may be useful for us to consider this (and every other issue)
from the perspective of the learner; this is, after all, the Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar, and
not for the Scholarly Study of it (as valuable as that is, and as much as we
all enjoy it). From the learner's perspective, the one who got the ball
does not change, so it would be confusing to change the terms
used. It is much easier to learn that the indirect object occurs in a
prepositional phrase after the direct object and plain before it. There
is much less teaching necessary, and much less chance for
misunderstanding. If we call them the same thing, it becomes much
easier to see these two things as basically the same. If we call them
different things, grammar suddenly becomes difficult for many students, and
something that stops making intuitive sense for the rest. As teachers,
when we decide how to describe language (or anything else), we
should pick the way which will make it easier for the learner to
understand it and to use that knowledge.
My impression is that there are two ways to define “indirect
object” and (as is frequently the case with definitions) no universally
accepted way to arrive at a pronouncement about the “right”
definition. From this and previous discussions, I think we are dealing with
which one(s) of the following three claims a given analyst wants to accept:
(1) [Semantic] Indirect Objects are Beneficiaries (to cadge a term from
Fillmore).
(2) [Semantic] Only Beneficiaries that are *required* by the semantic structure of the verb count as
indirect objects.
“Requirement,” in this sense, is adduced from the
observation that making a sentence with the verb without an overt Beneficiary
sounds strange unless the Beneficiary is clear from context.
(3) [Structural] Objects have to be bare complements to the verb. PPs
do not, therefore, count as objects.
Playing these off against three example sentences yields different
judgments:
(a)
Bjarki
gave Bjorn some lutfisk.
(b)
Bjarki
gave some lutfisk to Bjorn.
(c)
Bjarki
made some lutfisk for Bjorn.
Those who accept (1) but not (2) or (3) will see an indirect object
in all three sentences (and I would consider “hit the ball to me”
analogous to (c)). Those who accept (2) but not (1) or (3) will see an indirect
object in (a) and (b) only. Those who accept (2) and (3) will only see an
indirect object in (a). Those who accept only (3), eschewing semantic
definitions entirely, will simply talk about complements – some verbs
have one, some verbs have two, and you can call them whatever makes you happy.
The problem, of course, is that “Indirect Object,” as a
grammatical concept, was originally formulated to deal with the distinction
between accusative and dative objects in Latin, but English doesn’t have
a dative case, really. Early English grammarians frequently decided to consider
prepositions as being exactly equivalent to case marking, even to the extent of
making case tables with prepositions in them (accusative: him; dative: to him;
ablative: from him). This led quite naturally to considering both the
“bare” complement in (a) and the “prepositional
complement” in (b) as being in the dative case, thus exactly analogous to
their Latin equivalents. I’m not bringing this up to try to argue that
calling the third constituent in (b) is a bad thing, but rather to argue that
the argument itself is irresolvable. It is quite literally a matter of
definition.
From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar
[mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf
Of Edward Vavra
Sent: Tuesday, November 28, 2006
12:21 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Prepositional phrase as
an indirect object
I was recently asked about "to me" in
the sentence "Jack hit the ball to me." Is "to me" an
adverbial prepositional phrase, or can it be considered a prepositional phrase
that functions as an indirect object, i.e., as a noun? My question is--Do
members of this list agree on one or the other explanation, or is their
disagreement?
To join or leave this
LISTSERV list, please visit the list's web interface at: http://listserv.muohio.edu/archives/ateg.html
and select "Join or leave the list"
Visit ATEG's web site at
http://ateg.org/ To join or leave this LISTSERV list, please visit the list's
web interface at: http://listserv.muohio.edu/archives/ateg.html and select
"Join or leave the list"
Visit ATEG's web site at
http://ateg.org/
Everyone is raving about the
all-new Yahoo! Mail beta. To join or leave this LISTSERV list, please visit
the list's web interface at: http://listserv.muohio.edu/archives/ateg.html and
select "Join or leave the list"
Visit
ATEG's web site at http://ateg.org/