Ditransitive verb

In grammar, a ditransitive verb is a verb which takes a subject and two objects which refer to a theme and a recipient. According to certain linguistics considerations, these objects may be called direct and indirect, or primary and secondary. This is in contrast to monotransitive verbs, which take only one object, a direct or primary object.

In languages which mark grammatical case, it is common to differentiate the objects of a ditransitive verb using, for example, the accusative case for the direct object, and the dative case for the indirect object (but this morphological alignment is not unique; see below). In languages without morphological case (such as English for the most part) the objects are distinguished by word order and/or context.

English usage

English has a number of generally ditransitive verbs, such as give, grant, and tell and many transitive verbs that can take an additional argument (commonly a beneficiary or target of the action), such as pass, read, bake, etc.: