Meaning of ditransitive | Babel Free

Definitions

Of a class of verbs which take both a direct and an indirect object. An example is 'give', which entails a giver (subject), a gift (direct object) and a receiver (indirect object).

not-comparable

Equivalents

Examples

“So far, we have considered only transitive Verbs which take a single NP Complement. However, there are a subset of transitive Verbs (known as ditransitive Verbs) which can take two NP Complements, as illustrated in (16) below (where the NP Complements are bracketed): (16) (a) John gave [Mary] [a present] (16) (b) The postman handed [me] [a parcel] (16) (c) He showed [her] [his credentials] (16) (d) He sent [his mother] [some flowers] (16) (e) Never promise [anyone] [anything] The relevant subcategorisation frame for Verbs used in this construction will be [— NP NP], indicating that they can take two NP Complements.”

CEFR level