For example, consider the sentence, “Dennis and Johanna ate omelettes for breakfast. ” If you were to remove the direct object from the sentence, the verb’s action no longer makes much sense (“Dennis and Johanna ate for breakfast. ”) The direct object gives us information about the action that was performed by telling us for whom or for what the action was performed. [1] X Research source In the example of Dennis and Johanna, the eating was performed for the omelettes.
For example, “Sam showed his mother the new museum. ” Who performed an action in this sentence? Sam did. What did he do? He showed his mother the new museum. In this example, the direct object is “the new museum. ” If you ask yourself, “What or whom was shown?” You can see that the museum is what was shown, and is the direct object.
Action verbs that require a direct object are often called “transitive verbs”, while action verbs that don’t require a direct object are often referred to as “intransitive verbs. ” An example of a transitive action verb: “They gave Jeremy the money. ” In this sentence, the verb is “gave. ” Ask yourself what the subject (“they”) did. The subject “gave. ” This is a transitive verb. You can tell it’s transitive, because if you left the sentence at “they gave Jeremy,” the sentence would no longer make sense. This verb needs a direct object. In this case, the direct object is “money,” because the money is what was given. (“Jeremy” is the indirect object, to whom the money was given. )
For example, “John took his backpack and books to school. ” In this case, both “backpack” and “books” are direct objects. [4] X Research source An example of a direct object clause exists in this sentence: “John loves baking cakes. ” In this case, the action verb is “loves,” and the direct object is “baking cakes. ” If you ask yourself, “what does John love?”, you will see that the answer is, “baking cakes. ”[5] X Research source
An example of a linking verb is included in the following sentence: “They are stubborn children. ” The linking verb here (“are”) links the subject (the children) with the adjective (“stubborn”). An example of a state of being verb: “Sarah felt ill. ” In this sentence, the verb “feels” simply explains the state of the subject (Sarah). An example of an intransitive action verb: “Hannah sneezed repeatedly. ” The verb here is, “sneezed”, but if you ask yourself, “Who or what did Hannah sneeze?” You will find that there is no answer in the sentence which explains that.
For example, in the sentence, “Alice baked her mother a cake. ” You can quickly identify the subject who performed the verb (Alice) and the verb (baked). Now ask yourself, “What or whom was baked?” Was her mother baked? No, that’s not what the sentence says. The sentence says that she baked a cake. What was baked? A cake! You have now identified the direct object.
For example, “appear”, “grow”, “remain”, “smell”, and “turn. ” are all examples of linking verbs that can also be used as action verbs. In the sentence, “Michelle felt sick. ” The verb, “felt” is a linking verb because it does not require any explanation of whom or what. However, in the sentence, “Michelle felt her forehead. ” The verb, “felt” is an action verb because it requires an explanation of whom/what was felt, in this case, her forehead. If you were to remove this information, the sentence would not make sense.
If the word you have identified as the direct object is a verb, adjective, or an adverb, try reading the sentence again. Ask yourself again, “To whom or what was the action done?” Hopefully, asking yourself this, and look carefully for a noun or pronoun will help you identify the direct object.
Keep in mind, though, that if you are trying to identify a direct object in a foreign language, such as German, this may not always be the case as word order can vary dramatically among languages.
