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An indirect statement or question can replace the direct object of a verb that is related to thought or communication. An indirect statement is expressed by changing the case of the subject noun phrase from nominative to accusative and by replacing the main verb with an infinitive (as in the English phrase "You believe me to be a traitor" above).
In linguistics, an object is any of several types of arguments. [1] In subject-prominent, nominative-accusative languages such as English, a transitive verb typically distinguishes between its subject and any of its objects, which can include but are not limited to direct objects, [2] indirect objects, [3] and arguments of adpositions (prepositions or postpositions); the latter are more ...
The direct object the book is acted upon by the subject, and the indirect object Susan receives the direct object or otherwise benefits from the action. Traditional grammars often begin with these rather vague notions of the grammatical functions.
In English, objects and complements nearly always come after the verb; a direct object precedes other complements such as prepositional phrases, but if there is an indirect object as well, expressed without a preposition, then that precedes the direct object: give me the book, but give the book to me.
The dative construction is a grammatical way of constructing a sentence, using the dative case.A sentence is also said to be in dative construction if the subject and the object (direct or indirect) can switch their places for a given verb, without altering the verb's structure (subject becoming the new object, and the object becoming the new subject).
In this oblique dative sentence [John sent a letter to Mary], the verb, [sent], and its indirect object, [to Mary], make up a constituent that excludes the direct object [a letter]. The OD form therefore involves an underlying verb phrase (VP) whose subject is [a letter] and whose object is [(to) Mary].
A complement of a verbum dicendi can be direct or indirect speech. Direct speech is a single unit of linguistic object that is '"mentioned" rather than used.' [1] In contrast, indirect speech is a proposition whose parts make semantic and syntactic contribution to the whole sentence just like parts of the matrix clause (i.e. the main clause/sentence, as opposed to an embedded clause).
The Celtic languages (at least the modern Insular Celtic languages) distinguish two types of relative clause: direct relative clauses and indirect relative clauses. A direct relative clause is used where the relativized element is the subject or the direct object of its clause (e.g. "the man who saw me", "the man whom I saw"), while an indirect ...