Form and position of the indirect recipient objects

As to their form and position the following cases must be distinguished:

1. If the indirect recipient object is attached to a verb of inducement, it is always non-prepositional and has a fixed position in the sentence just before the direct object.

Mother orderedme to get down.

He urgedher to write a story about it.

2. If it is attached to the verbs of benefaction to announce, to ascribe, to attribute, to communicate, to contribute, to dedicate, to dictate, to disclose, to explain, to interpret, to introduce, to open, to point out, to repeat, to submit, to suggest, it is always prepositional and has two possible positions in the sentence, either before the direct object or after it. In both cases it is governed by the preposition to. It usually precedes the direct object if the latter is modified by an attribute.

He dictated the letterto his secretary.

Up to her death in 1935 she did not opento me her secret.

Then she explainedto me the cause of her refusal.

3. If the indirect recipient object is attached to a verb of benefaction other than those listed above, its form and position vary according to certain rules:

a) The indirect recipient object is non-prepositional when it precedes the direct object.

She offeredhim a sandwich. Jane sangme a song.

b) The indirect recipient object is prepositional when it follows the direct object. In this case the most frequent preposition is to.

She has given some kind of task to each girl. I’m going to offer something to you.

If the indirect recipient object denotes a person for whose benefit the action is done, it has the preposition for.

I’ll buy thisfor you.

с) The position of the indirect recipient object after the direct object is sometimes obligatory. This is the case either when both objects are personal pronouns, as in:

Give him to me. Send me to them.

or when the direct object is a personal pronoun, while the indirect object is a noun, as in

Give them to Nanny. Show it to John.

If the direct object is the pronoun it and the indirect recipient object is any other personal pronoun, the indirect recipient object may take the preposition or not.

Give it to him = Give it him.

The latter is more colloquial.

Sometimes the indirect recipient object may be placed before the predicate verb. This occurs in the following cases:

1. In pronominal questions referring to the indirect recipient object or its attribute.

Whom did you show the brooch to?

Which boy has she given the money to?

2. In attributive clauses.

This friend of his whom she had shown the letter to did not appear to know anything.

3. If the object is to be made more emphatic for the sake of contrast.

To you he’s telling his tales, not to me.

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The indirect recipient object	\|	The indirect non-recipient object

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