English Grammar Understanding the Basics

One interesting characteristic of language is that sentences can be related, in a consistent way, to other sentences. What do we mean by this? Let's start by looking at some related sentences which we've seen before.

1. 1a. She looked up the answer.

2. 1b. She looked the answer up.

3. 2a. We will just drop off the files.

4. 2b. We will just drop the files off.

5. 3a. The professor pointed out the correct answer.

6. 3b. The professor pointed the correct answer out.

You can see that one member of each pair is related to the other in a systematic way: the verb and its particle (both underlined) can either be next to each other or the particle can be on the other side of the next noun phrase. (See Lesson 11.) The important point here is that we can't change the structure of a sentence in any random way. For example, we can't say *She up looked the answer.

Let's look at other examples of related sentences:

1. 4a. Mary gave the information to Robert.

2. 4b. Mary gave Robert the information.

3. 5a. She told the truth to her grand daughter.

4. 5b. She told her grand daughter the truth.

5. 6a. They bought a car for their teenage daughter.

6. 6b. They bought their teenage daughter a car.

Once again, you can see that these indirect object pairs are related to each other in a systematic way. (See Lesson 40.) And again, we can't just randomly change them; for example, we can't say, *Mary Robert the information gave.