Introduction to Bitransitive Verbs

In English, there are verbs that take two objects, a direct and an indirect object: ‘I gave the waiter a tip’, ‘I cooked him dinner’. The direct object is the thing (seldom a person) that the verb directly acts upon. The indirect object is usually an animate being for or to whom the action is done. The indirect object can be expressed in two ways. Both the direct and indirect objects sometimes appear a simple nouns or pronouns, and in this case, the indirect object precedes the direct one (as in the examples given). The indirect object can also be indicated with the prepositions ‘for’ or ‘to’, in which case it follows the direct object: ‘I gave a tip to the waiter’ or ‘I cooked dinner for him’. In terms of Nahuatl grammar, we might term the indirect object the beneficiary (this term is to be understood broadly, as the indirect object may be harmed rather than benefited by the action). In these instances, the Nahuatl verb can take two objects, one representing the regular direct object and the other the beneficiary. Such verbs are called bitransitive. Unlike the case with English, where word order clearly distinguishes which is which when the beneficiary appears without the preposition, the bitransitive verbs in Nahuatl make no such formal distinction. In the natural order of things, the direct object will be inanimate and the beneficiary animate, but this is by no means always the case.