Object

Question

The police fined them five hundred pounds.What is a syntactic function of "five hundred pounds" in the above sentence? It doesn't seem to be direct or indirect object. My gut feeling tells me that it is an object but I can't pinpoint what an object it may be.

CalifJim · Accepted Answer

AnonymousThe police fined them five hundred pounds.

I would make a comparison with similar sentences.

The shopkeeper charged me three dollars.
The customer paid them seven pounds.
My mother gave them twelve cupcakes.

Does that help?

CJ

Anonymous · Answer

CalifJimI would make a comparison with similar sentences.The shopkeeper charged me three dollars.The customer paid them seven pounds.My mother gave them twelve cupcakes.Does that help?

What is obvious to me is that the direct objects that follow "gave" and "paid" are noun phrases, not pronouns. However, for my non-native grasp of that, somewhat deaf to subtleties of English, the verbs "charge" and "fine", seen lexically, seem to have pronouns as direct objects.

CalifJim · Answer

Anonymousthe direct objects that follow "gave" and "paid" are noun phrases, not pronouns.

Why would amounts of money (five pounds) not be noun phrases? For that matter, consider that pronouns ARE noun phrases.

Anonymousthe verbs "charge" and "fine", seen lexically, seem to have pronouns as direct objects.

I think I'm missing something. Pronouns are very commonly used as direct objects.
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All of that aside, I do see that 'fine' and 'charge' do present some characteristics that give us pause about putting them in the same category as 'pay' and 'give'. The passives don't work well, for example:

*Three dollars was charged me by the shopkeeper.

And the dative alternation is not possible either:

*The shopkeeper charged three dollars to me.

Nevertheless, it is a "double object" construction (verb + indirect object + direct object).

Beth Levin (English Verb Classes and Alternations) places 'charge' and 'fine' in the category she calls Bill Verbs, a subset of Measurement Verbs.

CJ

Anonymous · Answer

CalifJimWhy would amounts of money (five pounds) not be noun phrases? For that matter, consider that pronouns ARE noun phrases.Anonymousthe verbs "charge" and "fine", seen lexically, seem to have pronouns as direct objects.I think I'm missing something. Pronouns are very commonly used as direct objects.

Thank you for the reply.

PS: I've seemed to express myself not clearly enough. When I used the terms of "noun phrases" and "pronouns", I meant the phrases used in your examples and in mine without any generalisation.

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