What’s an object?

When I ask my students about the basic components of a sentence in English, this is what typically happens. Most of the time, they can identify the subject. Almost always, they are quite sure what the verb is. But rarely, very rarely, do they know what the object is, and the concept seems quite hard to grasp for many of them.

This invariably surprises me, and not just because I learnt about the object in a sentence when I was in 4th grade (Italian schools are quite old-school when it comes to studying grammar… and I’m grateful for that).

The main reason is that the object is one of the three pillars of a sentence in the English language. I guess you can live without knowing it if you’re a native speaker. But if English is not your first language, you’d better learn this concept as soon as you can. Because once you get it, a whole new world of possibilities opens up when you write.

So, in grammar-speak, what’s an object? To be more specific here, what’s a direct object? (yes, indirect objects exist too, but let’s stick to the basics now) It’s quite simple: the person or thing that “receives” the action expressed by the verb. Or more precisely, the answer to the question “what?”, or “whom?”, which is asked by the verb.

For example:

My brother loves pizza. (“loves” WHAT?)

I love my girlfriend. (“love” WHOM?).

Now, you might ask yourself: OK cool, and why does this matter?

Well, maybe because your sentences will not just involve easy nouns like “pizza” or “girlfriend”. You might have a gerund as an object (“I love playing basketball”). Or a noun clause (“I love whatever food you cook for me”). And once you understand what a direct object is, you won’t have problems with the passive voice anymore (“My brother ate the cake” becomes “The cake was eaten by my brother”).

Objectively (pun very much intended), it’s an easy notion to understand. And doing so is a first but fundamental stepping stone to increase the complexity of your writing.