Ditransitivus

Ditransitivus is a linguistic term referring to verbs that can take two direct objects. These verbs typically describe an action that transfers something from one entity to another, involving a theme or patient (the thing being transferred) and a recipient (the entity receiving the theme).

In English, ditransitive verbs commonly take a direct object and an indirect object. The indirect object often appears immediately after the verb, followed by the direct object. For example, in the sentence "She gave him a book," "him" is the indirect object (recipient) and "a book" is the direct object (theme). Alternatively, the direct object can be placed first, with the indirect object introduced by a preposition like "to" or "for." In this construction, "She gave a book to him," "a book" is the direct object and "him" is the prepositional phrase functioning as the indirect object.

The set of ditransitive verbs varies across languages. While English has a significant number of ditransitive verbs, other languages may express these semantic roles through different grammatical structures or a different set of verbs. Some verbs that are ditransitive in one language might be monotransitive (taking only one direct object) or intransitive (taking no direct object) in another. Understanding ditransitivity is crucial for analyzing sentence structure and the semantic relationships between verb and its arguments in various languages.