Sentence Structure: Subject-Verb-Indirect Object-Direct Object

A subject - verb - indirect object - direct object sentence consists of a subject, a ditransitive verb A verb which requires a direct object and an indirect object. more..., an indirect object An indirect object is the "thing" which is indirectly affected by a ditransitive verb. more..., and a direct object A direct object is the "thing" which is directly affected by a transitive verb. It may be a noun, noun phrase, nominal clause, an ing-clause, a to-cause, or a pronoun. more.... The subject, indirect object and direct objects are always filled by a noun phrase or a nominal A noun, noun phrase or any word or phrase which is used as a noun, such as adjectives and complement clauses, and which can occupy any place where you might expect to find a noun (such as subject, object, complement, etc.) . more... clause, and the indirect object is often a pronoun.

The subject in the sentence above is a one-word noun phrase - a personal pronoun. The indirect object is also a pronoun. The direct object is a two-word noun phrase (determiner + noun). In these structures the indirect object almost always precedes the direct object, as in this case.

Here are a few more examples (click and drag to stop, start and find the sentence you wish to examine):

You can view an analysis of some of the noun phrases in the above examples in the animations below (click on Subject to view each noun phrase).

In the above example we could rewrite the sentence as "They found a more suitable job for her." Many SV-Indirect Object-Direct Object sentences can be rewritten in this way.

In the above example the direct object "the confidence to investigate further" is slightly longer. The head is "confidence" and it is postmodified by a to-clause. Some direct objects can be much longer than this. You can see more examples on the SVO_i O_d page.

In the above example the direct object "what they are interested in" is a nominal relative clause A wh-clause which can be rewritten as a head noun modified by the wh-clause functioning as a relative clause. more....

You can see further examples of this structure on the SVO_i O_d page and test yourself on the SVO_i O_d exercise page.