§ 76. 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?

To whom did you send the parcel?

Which boy has she given the money to?

To which porter did you give your suitcase?

As seen from the examples, the preposition to can either retain its position after the direct object or come before the question word. Questions of the first type are characteristic of colloquial style, while those of the second type are formal.

2. In attributive clauses.

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

The man to whom she had given two loaves of bread never came back.

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.

The indirect non-recipient object

§ 77. The indirect non-recipient object is a prepositional object that follows both transitive and intransitive verbs and completes their meaning. The indirect non-recipient object may be preceded by various prepositions.

I thought about it a good deal.

Invention arises from idleness.

How would you deal with the problem?

I could hardly stand on my skates then.

The formal object it

§ 78. Some verbs cannot take an infinitive object or a clausal object. In this case the formal object it precedes the notional object. It is called introductory (or anticipatory) it. The sentence thus has two objects, the formal object it and a notional object, which is an infinitive or a clause. The formal object it may be either a direct object, or an indirect non-recipient object.

1. As a direct object it occurs after the verbs to take, to like, to find, to understand, to learn and some others.

Is she to take it that everything is О. К. ?

I understand it that you are my wife's brother.

We found it difficult to talk to him.

2. As an indirect non-recipient object it occurs after certain verbs which take objects with obligatory prepositions: to count (on), to depend (on), to hear (of), to insist (on), to object (to) and some others.

He objected to it that they should be taken to the island too.

§ 79. There is another use of it as a formal object: it can be attached to transitive or intransitive verbs to convey a very vague idea of some kind of an object.

I was angry. I made him take the present away. An hour later he returned and we made it up.

We therefore decided that we would sleep out on fine nights, and hotel it, and inn it, and pub it, when it was wet.

The cognate object

§ 80. The verbs that most frequently take a cognate object are:

to live (a life), to smile (a smile), to laugh (a laugh), to die (a death), to sigh (a sigh), to sleep (a sleep), to dream (a dream), to run (a race), to fight (a fight, a battle).

He died the death of a hero.

Here she stopped and sighed a heavy sigh.

One must live one's own life, you know.

The cognate object is always used with words modifying it, never alone:

the death of a hero, a heavy sigh, one's own life, etc.

to die the death of a hero = to die like a hero;

to sigh a heavy sigh = to sigh heavily, etc.

Semantically cognate objects characterize the action expressed by the predicate-verb. Nevertheless they are considered to be objects, not adverbial modifiers, because:

a) they are expressed by nouns without prepositions, which is not characteristic of adverbials;

b) they may occur in the position of the subject of a passive construction. He never doubted that life should be lived as he lived.

Objects to adjectives

§ 81. There are quite a number of adjectives that can take an object, although not quite in the same way as verbs do. In the sentence these adjectives are mainly used as predicatives. The objects they take are of two kinds:

I. Direct objects expressed only by infinitives or infinitive phrases. No noun or pronoun is ever possible in this position.

Mack was very glad to get home.

Mary was happy to have met us.

II. Indirect non-recipient objects governed by various prepositions. These objects are usually expressed by a noun or pronoun, sometimes by a gerund, a gerundial phrase or complex, or by a clause, depending on the combinability of the adjective.

Now she was ready for anything.

I was surprised at her being so shy.

She was only half conscious of what was going on.

As can be seen from the above examples, structurally objects to adjectives may be of the same types as objects to verbs, that is, simple phrasal, complex, or clausal.

Objects to statives

§ 82. The statives that can take objects are few in number. The most frequent of them are: afraid, aware, alive, ashamed, ahead, аkin. Their objects may be direct infinitive or clausal objects, or an indirect non-recipient object. The latter may be expressed by a noun (pronoun), a gerund, a gerundial phrase or predicative complex, or a clause.

She had never been afraid to experiment.

I think he was afraid I shouldn’t remember him.

I was afraid of you, my pretty.

I was not aware of your being a scoundrel.

He was fully aware of what he was doing.

Objects to adverbs

§ 83. There are some adverbs which can take objects, but these can only be indirect non-recipient objects.

Fortunately for himself, he could not be present