What is an object?

Grammatical objects are nouns or pronouns that complete the meaning of verbs and prepositions. Additionally, almost any group of words that functions as a noun can be an object, such as noun phrases, noun clauses, gerunds, and infinitives.

Objects of verbs

The objects of verbs relay information about who or what is receiving the action of the verb. The object of a verb can either be a direct object, meaning it directly receives the action of the verb, or it can be an indirect object, meaning it receives the direct object of the verb.

Note that only transitive verbs take objects.

Direct objects

Direct objects are directly affected by the verbs they complete—that is, the verb’s action is happening directly to them. For example:

• “The dog chased its tail.” (The object its tail is receiving the action of the verb chase.)
• “Mary reads a new book every week.” (The object a new book is receiving the action of the verb read.)
• “I asked Jonathan on a date.” (The object Jonathan is receiving the action of the verb asked.)

We can identify the direct object by asking the question Whom? or What? about the verb. The part of the sentence that answers that question is the direct object.

Indirect objects

An indirect object is the person or thing who receives the direct object of the verb. He, she, or it is still affected by the action of the verb, but now this happens indirectly. Indirect objects appear directly between the verb and its direct object.

For example:

• “Please pass me the salt.” (The pronoun me is receiving the direct object the salt, which receives the action of the verb pass.)
• “I sent the company an application for the job.” (The noun phrase the company is receiving the direct object an application, which receives the action of the verb sent.)

Only verbs that express an action being relayed to or done for another person or thing can take indirect objects. These are called ditransitive verbs. (Those that can only take direct objects are called monotransitive verbs.)

Indirect objects as prepositional phrases

The indirect object comes immediately before the direct object in a sentence, as we saw above. However, we can also communicate the same information by placing the indirect object after the direct object in a prepositional phrase using to or for. We can do this with any indirect object, but it is often preferable when the indirect object is particularly long. For instance:

Objects of prepositions

Prepositions also take objects, which work together to create prepositional phrases. Generally, a preposition is directly followed by its object. For example:

• “I am looking for work.” (The noun work is the object of the preposition for, which creates the prepositional phrase for work.)
• “Your backpack is under the table.” (The noun phrase the table is the object of the preposition under, which creates the prepositional phrase under the table.)
• “I got a ticket for speeding.” (The gerund speeding is the object of the preposition for, which creates the prepositional phrase for speeding.)
• “She can study with whomever she likes.” (The noun clause whomever she likes is the object of the preposition with, which creates the prepositional phrase with whomever she likes.)

The Objective Case

We largely do not inflect (change the form of) words to reflect whether they are acting as subjects or objects in a sentence. Personal pronouns, however, still have a unique form in the objective case when they act as objects of verbs or prepositions.

In addition, the pronouns who and whoever change in the objective case, becoming whom and whomever; however, this distinction is becoming less common, with who and whoever being used in most instances in modern English.

The table below gives a quick breakdown of these different cases and how they are used in a sentence. Notice that the pronouns you and it are the same for both cases.