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Before resuming our discussion on the problems that
arise when intransitive verbs are forced to act transitively, I
would like to share a very interesting feedback to my column last
week from a reader in the United States.
In that column, I said that
intransitive verbs generally can’t take an object, and for readers
to verify for themselves that this is so, I asked them to try
putting a direct or indirect object after the intransitive verbs in
these two sentences: “The train arrived.” “The destructive
species thrived.”
The reader who identified himself
only as “Pollux” said that while I was correct in saying that
intransitive verbs are in effect complete predicates, it isn’t
necessarily true that they can’t take objects at all. To
demonstrate his point, he attached certain phrases to my two
sentences above, as follows:
(1) “The train arrived rather
late than usual.”(2) “The train arrived at the wrong
terminal.” (3) “The destructive species thrived despite the
inhospitable environment.” (4) “The destructive species thrived
while the good ones perished.”
He contended that “rather late
than usual” in (1), “at the wrong terminal” in (2), “despite
the inhospitable environment” in (3), and “while the good ones
perished” in (4) are each an object of the intransitive verb
before it, thus disproving my claim that intransitive verbs can’t
take objects at all.
The phrases Pollux added to the
two sentences are, of course, perfectly valid complements, which we
will recall are words or phrases used after a verb to complete a
predicate construction. However, I must point out that none of those
add-on phrases is a direct or indirect object. While direct objects
and indirect objects are also complements, their grammatical
functions are different from those of the complements Pollux has
supplied.
A direct object, we will recall,
is a noun or pronoun that receives the verb’s action or shows the
result of that action, while an indirect object indicates to whom or
for whom the verb’s action is done or who is receiving the direct
object. In the sentence “She gave him the book,” for instance,
the noun “book” is the direct object or receiver of the action
of the verb “gave,” while the pronoun “him” is the indirect
object of that verb, telling us to whom the book was given.
Now we’re ready to evaluate
Pollux’s sentences.
Sentence 1: “The train arrived
rather late than usual.” Here, the phrase “rather late than
usual” is neither a direct nor indirect object of the verb
“arrived.” It doesn’t receive that verb’s action, and it
doesn’t tell us either to whom or for whom the action was done. It
is, in fact, simply an adverbial phrase describing the manner of the
train’s arrival.
Sentence 2: “The train arrived
at the wrong terminal.” The phrase “at the wrong terminal”
here is also neither a direct nor indirect object but a
prepositional phrase indicating the point in space where the train
arrived. Remember that a prepositional phrase consists of a
preposition and its object, and the one we have here is working as
an adverb modifying the verb “arrived.”
Sentence 3: “The destructive
species thrived despite the inhospitable environment.” Here,
“despite the inhospitable environment” is another prepositional
phrase, one that puts forth an idea in opposition to the
“thriving” aspect. It’s neither a direct nor indirect object
of the verb “arrived” but simply its adverbial modifier.
Sentence 4: “The destructive
species thrived while the good ones perished.” The phrase “while
the good ones perished” here is neither a direct nor indirect
object of the verb “thrived.” It’s actually a subordinate
clause linked to the main clause “the destructive species
thrived” by the subordinating conjunction “while.”
Clearly, then, Pollux’s add-on
phrases aren’t direct or indirect objects at all, thus disproving
his contention that intransitive verbs like “arrived” and
“thrived” can actually take direct or indirect objects.
(Next: More annoying grammar errors)
j8carillo@yahoo.com
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