The Object

The object is a linguistic unit serving to make the verb more complete, more special, or limit its sphere of distribution.

The divergency of relations between verbs and their objects is manifold. The completive bond in many, if not in all, languages covers a wide and varied range of structural meaning. This seems to be a universal linguistic feature and may be traced in language after language. But though English shares this feature with a number of tongues its structural development has led to such distinctive idiosyncratic traits as deserve a good deal of attention.

A verb-phrase has frequently a dual nature of an object and an adverbial modifier. Structures of this sort are potentially ambiguous and are generally distinguished by rather subtle formal indications aided by lexical probability.

The syntactic value of linguistic elements in a position of object is naturally conditioned by the lexical meaning of the verb, its related noun and their correlation. Regrettable mistakes occur if this is overlooked.

The dichotomic classification into prepositional and prepositionless objects seems practical and useful. It is to be noted, however, that the division based on the absence or presence of the preposition must be taken with an important point of reservation concerning the objects which

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have two forms: prepositional and prepositionless depending on the word-order in a given phrase, e. g.: to show him the book — to show the book to him; to give her the letter — to give the letter to her.

The trichotomic division of objects into direct, indirect and prepositional has its own demerits. It is based on different criteria which in many cases naturally leads to the overlap of indirect and prepositional classes.

Object relations cannot be studied without a considerable reference to the lexical meaning of the verb.

Instances are not few when putting an object after the verb changes the lexical meaning of the verb. And there is a system behind such developments in the structure of English different from practice in other languages.

Compare the use of the verbs to run and to fly in the following examples:

1. to run fast, to run home;

2. to run a factory, to run the house, to run a car into a garage;

1. to fly in the air;

2. to fly passengers, to fly a plane, to fly a flag.

In attempting to identify the linguistic status of different kind of objects in Modern English G. G. Pocheptsov advocates other criteria for their classification based on the relation between the verb and its object in the syntactic structure of the sentence. Due attention is given to the formal indications which, however, are considered secondary in importance to content. The classification is based on the dichotomy of the two basic types:object-object and addressee-object. The former embraces the traditional direct object and the prepositional object as its two sub-types. The addressee-object has two variants different in form: prepositionless and prepositional. The object of result, cognate object, etc., are considered to have no status as object types and are but particular groupings within the boundaries of the two basic types of object outlined above¹. This may be diagrammed as follows:

Types of Object	Object-object		Addressee-object
Sub-types of Object	direct	prepositional
Types of Bond	prepositionless	prepositional	prepositionless	prepositional
Examples:	He knew this.	He knew of this.	He gave me a letter.	He gave a letter to me.

¹ See: Г. Г. Почепцов. О принципах синтагматической классификации глагола (на материале глагольной системы современного английского языка). «Филологические науки», 1969, No. 3.

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The identification of object relations from the above given angle of view is not devoid of logical foundation and seems practical and useful.