Ditransitive Clauses

Ditransitive clauses are far less common than the three patterns you have already studied. In fact, the ditransitive pattern is only used with verbs related to "giving" or "doing something for someone."

The pattern for this clause is "Subject / Verb / Indirect Object / Direct Object". We represent this pattern like this: (SVOⁱO^d).

Note the following points:

• The subject always comes first (with very few exceptions).
• The verb always follows the subject.
• The direct object (often simply called the object) is the thing that is being "acted upon" by the verb.
• The indirect object is the person or thing that "receives" the benefit of the action. For example, in the example above, it is Judy who "receives" the benefit of "giving flowers."
• To find the indirect object, it is often helpful to turn the sentence into a question that starts with "who". For example, we might ask: "Who did Bob give the flowers to? The answer is Judy, so Judy is the indirect object.
• The indirect object is always squeezed between the verb and the direct object. (Another way to think of it is this: In a transitive sentence, the slot for the indirect object remains empty).

Here are more examples of ditransitive sentences.

Instructions for the Quiz

Indentify the underlined word or phrase.

• subject
• verb
• indirect object
• direct object