Ah--worthy community of Holy Worlds Knights and Ladies--how often I turn to thee when I'm worn out by the perils and toils of schoolwork. Anyways, I do have a few questions. I'm reviewing for my English final in a few days, and I just need some help on parts of speech. Grammar's never been my strong point, so I was wondering if any of y'all could help out.

I'm stuck on objects in particular--you know, direct object, indirect object, object complement, and so on. And subordinate word groups. I'm also stuck on those. I was wondering if any of y'all had some sort of link or book or something that's helped you with those? Or maybe--*gasps* One of you knows grammar well enough to explain it in person? Anyways, any help that can be given would be highly appreciated. (Ironically, for being a writer I sure am bad at grammar)

eruheran

a direct object receives the action stated by the verb

An indirect object does not but sounds like it does.


As in


My mother gave me some hot chocolate

Mother is the subject (duh. ) Gave is the verb. But she didn't give ME! She gave the hot chocolate. Thus hot chocolate is the DIRECT Object, and since I received the direct object I am the indirect

Now if I said

Mother gave me to slave traders "Me" WOULD be the direct object because I Would have been given.

I don't remember anything beyond what Willie said, (nice examples, by the way! ) but Shirley English Level 7 explains up through object complement nouns very well. I'm not sure about subordinate word groups...

I'm sure that all the grammar Nazis out there will probably stone me for this, but....

As long as you're speaking correctly, I don't think you need to worry about what to call things.

You don't say,

"I ate soup," and think Hey! soup is the direct object!

That's SILLY unless you're being forced to diagram sentences which is also completely useless.

YES!!! Why do we need to diagram sentences? (actually, I never had to, but it SOUNDS useless...)

It's actually kind of fun, Elanhil. You would need to know the "parts of speech" if you were learning another language (Latin, for instance).

But since we already speak English! *shakes head in disgust* I'm sorry. I will stop derailing this thread with my hatred of grammar.

Oh, and an objective complement is a word that describes the direct object.

So, you could say

The red door opened. And "red" would be the adjective.

But if you say, "We painted the door red." Then "red" would be the objective complement because it describes what the direct object has become.

OK *nods* That all makes sense--ESPecially the object complement...that was the one in particular that was giving me some trouble =)

Well, if it were up to me I wouldn't be learning parts of speech at all. But it's for a test and I figure it will help me later when I'm learning language. =) I know it's helped (some) in Russian...so maybe Grammar has a FEW redeeming elements.

Thanks for the help, y'all! =)

eruheran