English has a number of generally ditransitive verbs, such as
give,
grant, and
tell and many
transitive verbs that can take an additional argument (commonly a beneficiary or target of the action), such as
pass,
read,
bake, etc.: :
He gave Mary ten dollars. :
He passed Paul the ball. :
Jean read him the books. :
She is baking him a cake. :
I am mailing Sam some lemons. Alternatively, English grammar allows for these sentences to be written with a
preposition (
to or
for): (See also
Dative shift) :
He gave ten dollars to Mary. :
He passed the ball to Paul. :
Jean read the books to/for him. :
She is baking a cake for him. :
I am mailing some lemons to Sam., etc. The latter form is grammatically correct in every case, but in some dialects the former (without a preposition) is considered ungrammatical, or at least unnatural-sounding, when the direct object is a pronoun (as in
He gave me it or
He gave Fred it). Sometimes one of the forms is perceived as wrong for idiosyncratic reasons (
idioms tend to be fixed in form) or the verb simply dictates one of the patterns and excludes the other: :
*Give a break to me (grammatical, but always phrased
Give me a break) :
*He introduced Susan his brother (usually phrased
He introduced his brother to Susan) In certain dialects of English, many verbs not normally treated as ditransitive are allowed to take a second object that shows a beneficiary, generally of an action performed for oneself. :''Let's catch ourselves some fish
(which might also be phrased Let's catch some fish for ourselves'') This construction could also be an extension of a reflexive construction. In addition, certain ditransitive verbs can also act as monotransitive verbs: :"David told a story to
the children" – Ditransitive :"David told
a story – Monotransitive
Passive voice Many ditransitive verbs have a
passive voice form which can take a direct object. Contrast the active and two forms of the passive: Active: :
Jean gave the books to him. :
Jean gave him the books. Passive: :
The books were given to him by Jean. :
He was given the books by Jean. Not all languages have a passive voice, and some that do have one (e.g.
Polish) do not allow the indirect object of a ditransitive verb to be promoted to subject by passivization, as English does. In others like Dutch a passivization is possible but requires a different auxiliary: "krijgen" instead of "worden". E.g.
schenken means "to donate, to give": :Active:
Jan schonk hem de boeken – John donated the books to him. :Passive:
De boeken werden door Jan aan hem geschonken – The books were donated to him by John. :Pseudo-passive:
Hij kreeg de boeken door Jan geschonken – He got the books donated [to him] by John.
Attributive ditransitive verbs Another category of ditransitive verb is the attributive ditransitive verb in which the two objects are semantically an entity and a quality, a source and a result, etc. These verbs attribute one object to the other. In English,
make,
name,
appoint,
consider,
turn into and others are examples: •
The state of New York made Hillary Clinton a Senator. •
I will name him Galahad. The first object is a
direct object. The second object is an
object complement. Attributive ditransitive verbs are also referred to as
resultative verbs. ==Morphosyntactic alignment==