Watch: Identifying Objects and Complements (9 min video)

Transcript

_{The following transcript was automatically generated and may contain errors in spelling and/or grammar. It is provided for assistance in note-taking and review.}

Grammar is really about relatively simple units organized in infinitely complex ways. Now, a clause is one of those relatively simple units. I’m talking here about the main line of the clause, not the modifiers. As I’ve said about a dozen times now, a clause tells who did what. It has a subject. It has a verb. And it may have two other things. only two other things, and those two things can only occur in a few different combinations. In fact, five combinations, as we will see in the next lesson. We’ll get to those five easily memorizable combinations soon enough, but for now we are going to talk about those two other things that can occur on the main line besides the subject and the verb.

Those two things are objects and complements. An object is a noun. It’s a person or a thing, possibly a place, that receives the action of a verb. The subject performs the action. The object receives the action. Linda kicked the ball. Linda is the subject. She did the kicking. The ball is the object. It receives the kick. Maybe this will help. If you subject me to a punch in the nose, I might say, “Hey, I object!” You’re the subject. I’m the object. does the action, object receives the action. On the main line of a clause, there are two possible kinds of objects, direct objects and indirect objects. The direct object is by far the more common of the two, so we’re going to start there. Just as we had a verb finder and a subject finder, there is also a direct object finder, and it works like this. Once you have found your verb and your subject, you plug them into this question. blank, verb blank, who or what? If that question has an answer, that answer is your direct object. And by the way, it may not have an answer. In that case, you don’t have a direct object. Linda kicked what? Linda kicked the ball. Ball is our direct object. A goat ate my cell phone. A goat ate what? My cell phone. Cell phone is the object. Again, you’ve got to do the verb finder. You got to find your verb. you got to find your subject and then you can apply the direct object finder. My car lost a tire. Lost is the verb, car is the subject. My car lost what? A tire. Alright, this is relatively straightforward stuff. If you have a direct object, you may also have an indirect object. Another noun that doesn’t directly receive the action, but for whom or to whom the action is performed. And that indirect object always appears immediately before the direct object. So let’s look at this sentence. I will pour you a glass of water. First use your direct object finder. I will pour what? Now be careful here. Don’t say you. I’m not pouring you. I will pour a glass of water. Alright so that’s our direct object, glass of water. Now that we have found it, we can apply the indirect object finder to identify the indirect object. And here’s what indirect object finder looks like. You found the subject, you found the verb, you found the direct object, and you insert them into the blanks of this question. Subject blank, verb blank, direct object blank, to or for whom or what? The answer to that question, if there is an answer, is your indirect object. I will pour a glass of water for whom? For you. The indirect object is you. Here are a few more examples of sentences that have an indirect object. You told me a lie. Subject you, verb is told, direct object is lie. Right before that, you told a lie to or for whom? To me. So, me is the direct object. Grandpa read Cindy a book. Cindy is our indirect object. Ken gave Barbie flowers. Ken gave flowers to or for whom? Barbie. All right, before we move on to complements, let me point out a few things. An object is always a noun or a noun equivalent. Pronouns, by the way, are noun equivalents, and we’re gonna learn about a few other noun equivalents in a later lesson. So, in the sentence, “You told me a lie,” me is not a noun, but it is a noun equivalent, and that’s our indirect object. You cannot have an indirect object without a direct object. The indirect object, if you have one, always comes immediately before the direct object. Finally, an indirect object can always be rephrased as a prepositional phrase beginning with “to” or “for.” So you might say, “Ken gave Barbie flowers,” or you might say, “Ken gave flowers to Barbie.” way that the two sentences mean the same thing, but in the first example, Barbie is an indirect object, and in the second example, Barbie is stuck in a prepositional phrase.

“Grandpa read Cindy a book” could just as easily be “Grandpa read a book to Cindy.” Nothing about the logic of those sentences changes, nothing about the meaning changes, but grammatically speaking, one has an indirect object and one has the same information stuck in a prepositional phrase.

That’s kind of a matter of taste or preference for you as a writer, whether you do it as an indirect object or whether you do it with a prepositional phrase.

It’s not super important which way you choose to do that. Alright, let’s move on to compliments. A compliment either renames the subject or it describes the subject. So if you’re a Willie Nelson fan, you may know the song, “My Heroes Have Always Been Cowboys.” Cowboys renames heroes. You are a sweetheart. renames you. My dog is lazy. Lazy describes my dog. My dog smells funny. Funny describes my dog. These are all predicate complements. Predicate complements are divided into predicate nominatives, which are nouns renaming the subject, and predicate adjectives, which are adjectives describing the subject. The verb that connects or links the subject and its Its complement is called a linking verb. The most common linking verb by far are the “to be” verbs. Am, is, are, was, were, be, being, been. There are also some others. You look lovely. Luther smells strange. That test proved difficult. In each of those cases, you have a complement that describes or renames the subject, and And that verb, “proved” or “smells” or “looks” is serving as a linking verb there. Now there is absolutely no reason to try to memorize all the linking verbs. What I want you to know is that if that noun after the verb renames the subject, or if an adjective after the verb describes the subject, that verb is serving as a linking verb.

All right, now, what is the difference between an object and a complement? already been over this, but it bears repeating. An object is different from the subject. The subject does something to or for the object, whether that’s an indirect object or it’s a direct object. A complement, you might say, is the subject, or rather, it is the subject. If it’s a noun, it describes a subject. If it’s an adjective, the best way to see the difference here is to think about these two sentences. All right, they look a lot alike, but they’re grammatically quite different. First sentence, “My dog smells funny.” Second sentence, “My dog smells a hamburger.” Those sentences look a lot alike, right? And that verb looks exactly the same in both sentences, but the verb operates very differently. In one sentence, the verb is a linking verb. “Smells” is a linking verb. And in one sentence, “smells” is an action verb. And that’s part of the reason there’s no point in trying to memorize a list of of linking verbs. First of all, it’s just too long, but secondly, and probably more importantly, most linking verbs can also serve as action verbs. “Smells”–if I smell a flower, it’s an action verb. If I smell weird, it’s a linking verb. In the second sentence, “hamburger” is a direct object. My dog is not a hamburger. All right, so So to review, on the main line of a clause, you must have a subject and a verb, and you may have an object, possibly two, a direct and an indirect object, or you might have a complement.

There are two kinds of complements, predicate nominatives, which are nouns, and predicate adjectives, which are adjectives. A complement renames or describes the subject, but an object is a noun that is separate from the subject. And incredibly, that is all that can happen on the main line of a clause. Subject, verb, object, complement. Furthermore, those elements can only occur in certain combinations and in certain orders. There are only five such combinations. You can learn them. You will learn them in the next lesson. [MUSIC]