[B-Greek] Indirect Object

Carl W. Conrad cwconrad at artsci.wustl.edu
Thu Oct 2 07:56:39 EDT 2003


At 6:51 AM -0400 10/2/03, Lisa Novotny wrote:
>Can something other than a person be an indirect object?
>
>For example: I bought clay to make a sculpture for the crafts fair.
>
>Would "the crafts fair" be the indirect object?

Presumably you are using an English sentence but are really asking about
terminology normally used for Greek grammar.

The term "indirect object" is most commonly used in English--and by
traditional Greek grammarians as well--to refer to individual or collective
persons/groups TO or FOR whom the verbal action is performed. In terms of
that definition "the crafts fair" in your sentence would NOT be an
"indirect object" but rather the noun in a phrase "to the crafts fair"
which adverbially modifies the verb "make."

Increasingly nowadays grammarians are using the term "complement" rather
than "object" to refer to words relating adverbially to a transitive verb;
in Greek, this may be a "direct" complement, an accusative of the person or
thing receiving the action of the verb, or an "indirect" complement,
indicating the person affected in some way by the action of the verb, e.g.
the person for whom or to whom the action is carried out: in Greek this
would normally be expressed with a dative-case form. In Koine Greek,
however, this may just as likely be an accusative governed by the
preposition PROS or some other preposition.

This problem of terminology is further "muddied" by the fact that verbs
that don't take a direct object, especially intransitive verbs, may take a
dative complement which could easily be called an indirect object although
it isn't a person.

For example, PROSERCONTAI TWi hIERWi,"they approach the temple." In English
we'd probably understand "approach" as a transitive verb and call "the
temple" the direct object of "approach." In Greek TWi hIERWi clearly enough
functions as a "complement" for PROSERCONTAI but it wouldn't normally be
called an "indirect object." Some Greek grammarians tend to call this a
"dative of destination." I guess that adequately describes it, but I really
think that this whole business of "objects" and "complements" of verbs is
somewhat fuzzy. What do our professional linguists on the list say about
this? I think it's something worth trying to reach a consensus about,
whether or not we ever reach a complete agreement.


-- 

Carl W. Conrad
Department of Classics, Washington University (Emeritus)
1989 Grindstaff Road/Burnsville, NC 28714/(828) 675-4243
cwconrad at artsci.wustl.edu
WWW: http://www.ioa.com/~cwconrad/



More information about the B-Greek mailing list