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Saturday, January 8, 2011

More on Indirect Objects.

for x28de who asked
Can you give more examples to type III indirect objects with/without the “to”, and if there are cases where the “to” is necessary or forbidden.


You can say "Give me it!"  for "Give it to me!" 

Some English speakers may say "Give it me!", but that is because in their part of England, they tend to drop articles and such.  You can see that the "to" has been left out of that sentence where it is necessary.

That's really all there is.  Familiar patterns are familiar or not.  One little eight-year-old boy  whom I was tutoring understood the more sophisticated  "He read them stories." and not "He read stories to them."  

Longer sentences are considered to be harder to understand...but really that's when you are expected to remove subordinate clauses and make simple sentences of them.  We are told to use only 20 words, but complex ideas require complex sentences.

"Give to me it!" is not forbidden...but it sounds wrong to the English ear.  We would never say that.

The other day I heard a comic tell a story about European relatives who would put violent images into his head by saying things like "Would someone please throw me from the balcony ... a sweater."  It was the pause that made the comic timing that helped the joke.

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