What is a direct object?

Definition
	A direct object is a grammatical relation that exhibits a combination of certain independent syntactic properties, such as the following:
	The usual grammatical characteristics of the patient of typically transitive verbs A particular case marking A particular clause position The conditioning of an agreement affix on the verb The capability of becoming the clause subject in passivization The capability of reflexivization
	The identification of the direct object relation may be further confirmed by finding significant overlap with similar direct object relations previously established in other languages. This may be done by analyzing correspondence between translation equivalents.

Discussion
	The direct object relation should be identified on a language-specific basis.

Generic
	A direct object is a kind of
	What is an object?

Sources
	Crystal 1985 94
	Hartmann and Stork 1972 155
	Mish 1991 358
	Comrie 1989 66
	Andrews, A. 1985 68, 120, 126
	Comrie 1985a 337

Context for this page:

Concept module: direct object
In overview module: Glossary (Linguistics): D
In modular book: Glossary of linguistic terms, by Eugene E. Loos (general editor), Susan Anderson (editor), Dwight H., Day, Jr. (editor), Paul C. Jordan (editor), and J. Douglas Wingate (editor)
In bookshelf: Linguistics

This page is an extract from the LinguaLinks Library, Version 5.0 published on CD-ROM by SIL International, 2003. [Ordering information.]

Page content last modified: 5 January 2004

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