nondirectobject

Nondirectobject is a term used in grammar to refer to any object that is not the direct object of a transitive verb. While the direct object receives the action of the verb, nondirect objects provide additional information such as recipient, beneficiary, or instrument, and can take various forms depending on the language and analysis.

In English, many verbs can take both a direct object and a nondirect object. For example, in “She gave him a book,” the direct object is “a book,” and “him” functions as an indirect object or recipient. The same relationship can be expressed with a prepositional phrase, as in “She gave a book to him,” where “to him” is the object of the preposition and also a nondirect object under certain analyses.

Nondirect objects also include objects of prepositions (prepositional objects) and other oblique elements that accompany a verb but are not the main direct object. For instance, in “He relied on his friends,” the phrase “on his friends” is a prepositional object functioning as a nondirect object.

Cross-linguistically, the distinction between direct and nondirect objects varies. Some languages encode indirect objects with dedicated case markings, others rely on word order, prepositions, or ditransitive constructions to separate DO and IO roles. In many linguistic theories, nondirect objects are analyzed as indirect objects, oblique objects, or prepositional objects rather than as a single uniform category.

In computational linguistics and parsing, distinguishing direct from nondirect objects can aid in identifying semantic roles, valency, and argument structure in sentences.