ditransitive

In grammar, the adjective 'ditransitive' identifies a transitive verb that takes two objects.

"Melody sang me a song."

"She gave me him for my birthday."

or it is placed after the direct object and marked with a preposition like 'to', or 'for' as in

"She gave him to me."

In English, both objects are marked with the objective case for pronouns, while some other languages distinguish the two by case (e.g., dative and ablative in Latin).

Homework:

If we call a verb that takes two objects 'ditransitive', what should we call a verb that takes only one object?

A ditransitive verb is a verb that has a subject and two objects, a direct object and an indirect object. The most common ditransitive verbs are those that involve acquiring or ceding something: to give, to make, to share, etc.

They can usually be written in one of two forms:

• "{subject} {conjugated verb} {direct object} {indirect object}"
• "{subject} {conjugated verb} {indirect object} {preposition} {direct object}"

For example: "X gave Y the box", which can also be written with a preposition as "X gave the box to Y". Here, "X" is the subject, "Y" the indirect object/receiver, and "the box" is the direct object/patient.

Of course, they can be rewritten in the passive voice if you feel like doing so: "The box was given to Y by X", or "Y was given the box by X".

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