linguistics Linguistics is the scientific study of human language. It is called a scientific study because it entails a comprehensive, systematic, objective, and precise analysis of all aspects of language, particularly its nature and structure. Lingu ...

, an object is any of several types of

arguments An argument is a statement or group of statements called premises intended to determine the degree of truth or acceptability of another statement called conclusion. Arguments can be studied from three main perspectives: the logical, the dialectic ...

. In subject-prominent, nominative-accusative languages such as English, a

transitive verb A transitive verb is a verb that accepts one or more objects, for example, 'cleaned' in ''Donald cleaned the window''. This contrasts with intransitive verbs, which do not have objects, for example, 'panicked' in ''Donald panicked''. Transiti ...

typically distinguishes between its

subject Subject ( la, subiectus "lying beneath") may refer to: Philosophy *''Hypokeimenon'', or ''subiectum'', in metaphysics, the "internal", non-objective being of a thing **Subject (philosophy), a being that has subjective experiences, subjective cons ...

and any of its objects, which can include but are not limited to direct objects, indirect objects, and arguments of adpositions ( prepositions or postpositions); the latter are more accurately termed ''oblique arguments'', thus including other arguments not covered by core grammatical roles, such as those governed by case morphology (as in languages such as

Latin Latin (, or , ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally a dialect spoken in the lower Tiber area (then known as Latium) around present-day Rome, but through the power ...

) or

relational noun Relational nouns or relator nouns are a class of words used in many languages. They are characterized as functioning syntactically as nouns, although they convey the meaning for which other languages use adpositions (i.e. prepositions and postpos ...

s (as is typical for members of the

Mesoamerican Linguistic Area The Mesoamerican language area is a ''sprachbund'' containing many of the languages natively spoken in the cultural area of Mesoamerica. This sprachbund is defined by an array of syntactic, lexical and phonological traits as well as a number of ethn ...

). In ergative-absolutive languages, for example most Australian Aboriginal languages, the term "subject" is ambiguous, and thus the term "

agent Agent may refer to: Espionage, investigation, and law *, spies or intelligence officers * Law of agency, laws involving a person authorized to act on behalf of another ** Agent of record, a person with a contractual agreement with an insuran ...

" is often used instead to contrast with "object", such that basic word order is often spoken of in terms such as Agent-Object-Verb (AOV) instead of Subject-Object-Verb (SOV).

Topic-prominent language A topic-prominent language is a language that organizes its syntax to emphasize the topic–comment structure of the sentence. The term is best known in American linguistics from Charles N. Li and Sandra Thompson, who distinguished topic-promine ...

s, such as

Mandarin Mandarin or The Mandarin may refer to: Language * Mandarin Chinese, branch of Chinese originally spoken in northern parts of the country ** Standard Chinese or Modern Standard Mandarin, the official language of China ** Taiwanese Mandarin, Stand ...

, focus their grammars less on the subject-object or agent-object dichotomies but rather on the pragmatic dichotomy of

topic and comment In linguistics, the topic, or theme, of a sentence is what is being talked about, and the comment (rheme or focus) is what is being said about the topic. This division into old vs. new content is called information structure. It is generally ...

Types

English

In English traditional grammar types, three types of object are acknowledged: ''direct objects'', ''indirect objects'', and ''objects of prepositions''. These object types are illustrated in the following table: Note that indirect objects are frequently expressed as objects of prepositions, complicating the traditional typology; e.g. "I gave salt ''to the man''."

Other languages

Some Chinese verbs can have two direct objects, one being more closely bound to the verb than the other; these may be called "inner" and "outer" objects.

Secundative language A secundative language is a language in which the recipients of ditransitive verbs (which takes a subject and two objects: a ''theme'' and a ''recipient'') are treated like the patients (targets) of monotransitive verbs (verbs that take only one ...

s lack a distinction between direct and indirect objects, but rather distinguish primary and secondary objects. Many African languages fall into this typological category.

Syntactic category

While the typical object is a pronoun, noun, or noun phrase, objects can also appear as other

syntactic categories A syntactic category is a syntactic unit that theories of syntax assume. Word classes, largely corresponding to traditional parts of speech (e.g. noun, verb, preposition, etc.), are syntactic categories. In phrase structure grammars, the ''phrasal ...

, as illustrated in the following table for the

English language English is a West Germanic language of the Indo-European language family, with its earliest forms spoken by the inhabitants of early medieval England. It is named after the Angles, one of the ancient Germanic peoples that migrated to t ...

: :::::

Identification

A number of criteria can be employed for identifying objects, e.g.: ::1. Subject of passive sentence: Most objects in active sentences can become the subject in the corresponding passive sentences. ::2. Position occupied: In languages with strict

word order In linguistics, word order (also known as linear order) is the order of the syntactic constituents of a language. Word order typology studies it from a cross-linguistic perspective, and examines how different languages employ different orders. C ...

, the subject and the object tend to occupy set positions in unmarked declarative clauses. ::3. Morphological case: In languages that have case systems, objects are marked by certain cases (accusative, dative, genitive, instrumental, etc.). Languages vary significantly with respect to these criteria. The first criterion identifies objects reliably most of the time in English, e.g. ::Fred gave me a book. ::a. A book was given (to) me.—Passive sentence identifies ''a book'' as an object in the starting sentence. ::b. I was given a book.—Passive sentence identifies ''me'' as an object in the starting sentence. The second criterion is also a reliable criterion for

analytic language In linguistic typology, an analytic language is a language that conveys relationships between words in sentences primarily by way of ''helper'' words ( particles, prepositions, etc.) and word order, as opposed to using inflections (changing th ...

s such as English, since the relatively strict word order of English usually positions the object after the verb(s) in declarative sentences. In the majority of languages with fixed word order, the subject precedes the object. However, the opposite is true for the very small proportion (approximately 2.9%) of the world's languages that utilize

object–subject word order In linguistic typology, object–subject (OS) word order, also called O-before-S or patient–agent word order, is a word order in which the object appears before the subject. OS is notable for its statistical rarity as a default or predomi ...

by default.

Verb classes

Verbs can be classified according to the number and/or type of objects that they do or do not take. The following table provides an overview of some of the various verb classes: ::::: Ergative and object-deletion verbs can be transitive or intransitive, as indicated in the following table: :::::::::: The distinction drawn here between ergative and object-deletion verbs is based on the role of the subject. The object of a transitive ergative verb is the subject of the corresponding intransitive ergative verb. With object-deletion verbs, in contrast, the subject is consistent regardless of whether an object is or is not present.

In sentence structure

Objects are distinguished from subjects in the syntactic trees that represent sentence structure. The subject appears (as high or) higher in the syntactic structure than the object. The following trees of a

dependency grammar Dependency grammar (DG) is a class of modern grammatical theories that are all based on the dependency relation (as opposed to the ''constituency relation'' of phrase structure) and that can be traced back primarily to the work of Lucien Tesniè ...

illustrate the hierarchical positions of subjects and objects:Dependency trees similar to the ones produced here can be found in Ágel et al. (2003/6). :: Grammatical_objects

The subject is in blue, and the object in orange. The subject is consistently a dependent of the

finite verb Traditionally, a finite verb (from la, fīnītus, past participle of to put an end to, bound, limit) is the form "to which number and person appertain", in other words, those inflected for number and person. Verbs were originally said to be '' ...

, whereas the object is a dependent of the lowest

non-finite verb A nonfinite verb is a derivative form of a verb unlike finite verbs. Accordingly, nonfinite verb forms are inflected for neither number nor person, and they cannot perform action as the root of an independent clause. In English, nonfinite verbs i ...

if such a verb is present.

Notes

Literature

*Ágel, V., L. Eichinger, H.-W. Eroms, P. Hellwig, H. Heringer, and H. Lobin (eds.) 2003/6. Dependency and valency: An international handbook of contemporary research. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter. *Biber, D. et al. 1999. Longman Grammar of spoken and written English. Essex, England: Pearson Education limited. *Carnie, A. 2013. Syntax: A generative introduction, 3rd edition. Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell. *Collins Cobuild English Grammar 1995. London: HarperCollins Publishers. *Conner, J. 1968. A grammar of standard English. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company. *Freeborn, D. 1995. A course book in English grammar: Standard English and the dialects, 2nd edition. London: MacMillan Press LTD. *Keenan, E. and B. Comrie 1977. Noun phrase accessibility and universal grammar. Linguistic Inquiry 8. 63–99. *Kesner Bland, S. Intermediate grammar: From form to meaning and use. New York: Oxford University Press.

External links

Direct Objects
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{{DEFAULTSORT:Object (grammar) Syntactic entities