LESSONS IN ENGLISH. 



107 



transitively. If no specific object in given, tho verb may be 

 considered intransitive ; an 



Intraiwiitv*. Man drinks ; the horso trot* ; 



Troiuitiw. Man drinks water ; the bone trot* ten milet an hour. 



Tho verb drinks may be resolved into those terms, is d<- ink- 

 ing; as in thin example : 



The sick man it drinking a beverage ; 



whence wo loam that present participles have the same govern- 

 ; -i the verbs to which they belong. 



. . verbs, though in general incapable of an object, 

 may tako an object in a noun of kindred moaning ; as 



" Let me ilia the death of tho righteous." (Numb, xxiii. 10.) 

 Intransitivos have the force of transitivea also in certain 

 idiomatic phrases ; as 



" Thoy laugbed him to scorn." (Matt. ix. 24.) 



THE OBJECT. 



Tho object of a proposition may, as we have seen, appear in 

 a variety of forms. The object also assumes several shapes. 

 Tho chief variations may bo presented as follows : 



Tho object of a proposition may be either 



1. .4 Noun. The man drinks a beverage. 



2. A. Pronoun. The man calls me. 



3. .1 Noun and an In.rinifu<e. Tho man bids his ton remain. 



4. Two Nouns. He teaches his son Latin. 



5. A Proposition. The man declares he is iB. 



If dependent on tho verb that is, if it receives the action of 

 the verb the noun is the object of tho verb ; as 

 " Preventing fame, misfortune lends him wings ; 

 And Pompey's self his own sad story brings." Rove's " Lucan." 



Equally simple is the case of a pronoun viewed as the object 

 of a verb ; as 



" Did I request thee, Maker, from my clay 



To monld mo man ? " Milton. 



The construction of a noun and infinitive as the object of a 

 verb may be slightly varied. For the noun a pronoun may be 

 substituted ; as 



The man bids me remain. 



Before most verbs thus related the preposition to is placed ; 

 as in this example : 



The man commands his son to remain. 



In this sentence it is clear that the words " his son to 

 remain " form a compound object, and are in the same relation 

 to the verb as the single noun army in the ensuing sentence : 



The man commands an armi/. 



In the previous sentence, son is at once the object (or part of 

 the object) to tho verb commands, and the subject of the infini- 

 tive to remain ; son, therefore, may be considered as the objec- 

 tive case before the infinitive to remain. 



The object, "his son to remain," may be enlarged, thus : 



The man commands his son and daughter to remain. 



The man commands his only son to remain. 



The man commands his sou forthwith to go home and remain there. 



All these constructions, and others of a similar kind, hold to 

 the verb the same relation that I have indicated, that is to nay, 

 they are severally the objects to the verb commands. These 

 objects are compound, and being compound, they may be re- 

 solved into their component parts, and tho relations set forth 

 which those parts bear to each other, as well as that which they 

 bear to their common head, the verb commands. 



Instead of the second object, a noun might be given, as 



The man teaches his son Greek. 



Here the noun Greek (that is, tho Greek language) holds to 

 teaches the relation which to remain holds to commands. It is 

 not every verb, however, which has after it two nouns as objects. 

 But as in Latin, so in English, verbs which signify to learn and 

 to teach may have dependent on them two separate objects. 



In some instances where two objects appear after a verb, the 

 construction is in reality elliptical ; for example 



He gave his son a book ; 

 that is, in full- 

 He gave a book to his son. 



You will now have the less difficulty in understanding how a 

 sentence may be the object of a verb ; as 

 The man says (that) he u ill. 



The words he it ill you will at onoe reoogniM as 



statement, and :t little reflection will show 700 that the sentence 

 bean to the verb lays tho relation of an object to its verb. 

 The conjunction tlmt in merely an explanatory word, or, indeed, 

 an expletive. 



A sentence as the object of the verb may also be enlarged : 



The mail oy he is sick and llktly to di 



The man says be is sick, ami hat Inn given owr by (* /aevtty/N' a 

 long time. 



Tho compound object in our model sentence will now be 

 readily understood, namely 



The man drinks a beverage made of wine and water. 

 In this compound object, which consists of the words in italics, 

 analysis shows us a noun, beverage, depending on the verb 

 drinks ; a participle, made, agreeing with beverage, and there- 

 fore conjointly with beverage dependent on drinks ; a preposi- 

 tion, of, connecting made with wine and water ; a noun, water, 

 dependent on tho proposition of; a conjunction, andf connecting 

 water with wine ; and, finally, another noun, wine, connected 

 with water and tho preposition of, and consequently standing to 

 the preposition of and to the sentence generally in the relation 

 held by tho noun water. 



I must subjoin a few words respecting the object. 



Observe, then, that wine and water do not hold to drinks 

 exactly the same relation which the words "his son Greek" 

 hold in the above example. If so, a verb might be said to 

 have several objects : for example : 



The man bequeathed money, wine, boots, and land. 



It is true that the nouns form the object to the verb be- 

 queathed, but they are a compound object made by repetition / 

 whereas in the proposition 



The man taught his son Greek, 



the compound object is formed by addition. And in the con- 

 struction which assigns to certain verbs a double object, one of 

 those objects is a person, the other is a thing. Double objects, 

 like single ones, may be augmented by repetition ; as 



The man taught his wife, his sods, and his daughters Greek. 

 The man taught his son Greek, Latin, German, and French. 



The position of tho object is after the verb. And the ob- 

 servance of this law is in English so imperative that by dis- 

 regarding it yon create ambiguity, if you do not change the 

 object into the subject and the subject into the object ; as 



SUBJECT. OBJECT. 



The father struck the son 



SUBJECT. OBJECT. 



The son struck the father. 



As an instance of ambiguity from the inversion of the object, 

 take this instance : 



" This power has praise that virtue scarce can warm, 

 Till fame supplies the universal charm." Johnson. 



Which is the subject, and which the object? Do you mean 

 that power has praise, or that praise has power ? 



PREPOSITIONS. 



The preposition is intimately connected with two other parts 

 of speech, the verb and tho noun. The relation of the verb to 

 its object, or of tho doer and tho doing to the thing done, ia 

 often expressed but imperfectly by the verb. Thus, when I say 

 I go, I make a merely general statement ; if I wish to give 

 specific information, I say 



I go from the city into the country. 



It is not every object, however, which requires a preposition. 

 When I say 



I pull the boat, 



boat stands in immediate dependence on pull, and neither has 

 nor needs any preposition ; but if I add a second object with 

 that object, I (for the most part) employ a preposition ; as 



I pull the boat from the shore. 



The verb and preposition may indeed be regarded as one 

 word thus, to come-from, to go-to when by means of the 

 several suffixes a modification of meaning is in each instance 

 caused. These intransitive verbs thus supplemented become 

 transitive, that is, have an immediate object, for we can say 



I come-from Bath ; I go-to Bath, etc. 



The preposition is thus seen to stand between tho verb and its 

 object in order to assist the former in the expression of the 

 latter. As, however, tho object stands in immediate dependence 



