An Out of the Box Approach to Direct and Indirect Objects.
An “Out of the Box Approach to Direct and Indirect Objects.
A few days ago, Ray76 posted a question on direct and indirect objects. As I am a teacher fully acquainted with the subtleties of English And Spanish grammar, I found it easy to understand.
However as a child when my English teacher spoke of Direct Object and Indirect Object and went around and around with difficult to understand explanations I muttered to myself, “I object.”
I fully intended to post this as an answer to Ray’s question, but he took it down as it seems that nobody posted a reply.
I titled this “An ‘out-of the Box’ Approach to understanding direct and indirect objects. This article is based on information I received when I took a course in Scientific Linguistics, which unlike grammar, really gets into what is happening in a language and how languages function.
I am going to introduce four new terms for your consideration.
(1) Doer…………………………..A person or animal or something that does something.
(2) Verb………………………….This is action either physical or mental. There are two verbs which are not action,--“to be” and “to have.” The first is a sort of “equal” sign the second establishes a relationship.
(3) The “Done-to” This is someone or something that has had something “done” to it. i.e., I hit my brother. My brother has had something done to him.
(4) Involved entity. This is someone,or an animal, (it can also be “something” in Spanish) that is involved in some way the action and the done-to.
Model sentence:
Pedro gave his dog a bone.
Pedro obviously is the “doer” This is the “subject” for you grammar people.
“Gave” is the action. When you give something, you move something through space or someone does it for you.
What was moved through space (had something done to it) was the bone. The “done-to” (direct object for you grammarians.)
Now someone was happy about all this—the dog. He is our involved entity. (or indirect object for the grammarians.)
Model sentence repeated.
Pedro gave (to) his dog a bone.
Now in Spanish
Pedro le dio un hueso a su perro. The only difference between the Spanish and the English is that in addition to the Involved entity (ind. obj) you must also include the Involved entity pronoun. (le) Remember the I.E pronoun can be translated as “to” “from” or “for.”
Some examples.
Le compré un suéter nuevo a mi hijo. I bought a new sweater for my son.
Le di a mi suegra un vestido nuevo. I gave (to) my mother-in-law a new dress.
El ladrón me robó el dinero. (Literally- the thief robbed from me the money) In regular English this comes out as “The thief took or robbed my money.”
Remember whenever a D/O and an I/O object are used together, the “le” or “les” changes to “se.”
Examples: Did Pedro give his dog the bone? ¿Pedro le dio el hueso a su perro?
“Sí se lo dio.
Did you write the letters to your grandma? ¿Le escribiste las cartas a tu abuela?
Sí, se las escribí.
Now, this is sort of a shortened down version of what I give my students. Not one of them ever has a problem with these pronouns afterward.
17 Answers
Thank you so much Dani , this is starting to work for me now , before I read this
the terms were a jumble of words that made no sense , now they are coming alive.
Great post Dani 
I have found this post very helpful in understanding D.O.'s and I.O.'s more clearly! I will probably return to this post again sometime for a refresher
Thank you soooooo much Dani, for all the hard work you always put into these teaching posts of yours and for explaining these topics in such a way as to make them much easier for us Spanish students to learn and understand! The examples you provide help to bring the guiding principles to life!
When I used to watch Paralee's teaching videos, this is probably the topic I struggled with most,...particularly the word order and remembering which word substituted (was meant to stand in) for which lol I even used to find present subjunctive easier to understand in Paralee's videos than this topic lol
Thank you , again
I always thought that indirect object pronouns worked the same ways as direct object pronouns in that you can replace one for the other. Like for your example: I bought a new sweater for my son. -> Le compré un suéter nuevo a mi hijo.
I would've written it as Le compré un suéter nuevo and thought add a mi hijo only when it's ambiguous. Do I need to always use the indirect object pronoun when there's one in the sentence? Seems weird to always include the pronoun then. Why not write 'compré un suéter nuevo a mi hijo'?
An interest in grammar is probably the main reason why I was able to learn Spanish on my own & progress to an intermediate level (OK... that and maybe 5+ years of my time). The point is, I understand the concept of subject, verb, DO and IO, along with their respective pronouns. But it amazes me how few people at my level are comfortable with this - your approach Daniela, might make a few lightbulbs go on if they could see this
I gotta bump this. another question came up.
Since this has come up again, I'm going to do "el bumpo"
You may notice that there seams to be a plethora of threads on this subject
but in my opinion there can never be enough for the simple reason that
**although they cover the same subject they come at it from a different angle
and I must say that this is probably one of the best. New members are always
asking questions about this subject and therefore they deserve to be able to
have the opportunity of it being at their fingertips without a long search.
Bumping. There have been several questions on this as of late.
Mi jefe requests a bump. So "El Bumpo."
Un hilo genial, Daniela.
As it is written " they that bump shall inherit the earth , well perhaps the S D part.
Go Feisty go !
Amazing that we post all the help possible on this and many subjects yet
new members bypass them to ask the question that these very posts answer.
I guess we are in an era whereby people want everything done for them.
We down here call it a "Nanny state.
Members are still getting help from this,-Así que otra ronda para ello.
Bumping
