Objects

The subject of a sentence does something to an object. The object is the thing or person who is affected by the subject and the verb.

Single Objects

The subject of this sentence is Patricia. She is the 'star actor'. The verb is ate and this tells us what she does. The object of the sentence is the cake and this is the thing affected by Patricia's action.

The object is a noun phrase and it usually comes after the verb in a sentence:

Direct & Indirect Objects

Sometimes we can have a sentence with two objects. We call these objects direct and indirect.

The subject gives the direct object to the indirect object.

We can also change the positions of the direct and indirect object. When we do this, we add to or for:

We can use to with: give, hand, lend, offer, owe, pass, pay, promise, read, sel l, send, show, take, teach, tell, and write.

We can use for with: buy, cook, fetch, find, get, leave, make, order, reserve, and save.

We can use to or for with bring:

In the first example, I let Martin look at the problem; in the second example I handed the problem to Martin - he has to deal with it now.