Understanding clauses

Object or modifier?

So we've established that verbs determine whether an object is required. BUT some verbs have different requirements depending on context.

Consider the objects and modifiers in the 'to eat' clauses in the next two snippets:

The next morning, the Cyclops grabbed two more men, smashed their heads against the rocks, and ate them for his breakfast.

Odysseus and the Cyclops (from The Odyssey)

While we ate beside a small fire I could hear the dogs on the hill not far away.

Island of the Blue Dolphins(1960)

If we remove the object "them" (the thing being eaten) from the first snippet, the sentence doesn't make sense.

But the second snippet doesn't need the object to make sense. What they are eating isn't important—the snippet is using the verb 'to eat' in a more general sense.

We could add something in that is being eaten:

While we ate breakfast beside a small fire I could hear the dogs on the hill not far away.

Does that mean we should highlight "breakfast" as a modifier in this instance? Well... no.

This is where identifying objects can get tricky.

Without getting bogged down in really technical stuff, here's a few guidelines for quickly deciding whether something is an object or a modifier:

  • Noun groups and adjective groups are never modifiers in standard English, even if they are not necessary for the sentence to be grammatically correct:
    • "We ate breakfast beside a small fire."
  • Objects tend to come directly after the verb that they belong to:
    • "We ate breakfast beside a small fire."
      NOT
    • "We ate beside a small fire breakfast."
  • Modifiers tend to be more flexible about where you put them:
    • "We ate breakfast beside a small fire."
      OR
    • "Beside a small fire, we ate breakfast."
      OR
    • "We, beside a small fire, ate breakfast."

These guidelines aren't perfect, so don't be surprised if you come across examples that don't strictly follow these rules.

And unless you're really interested in language structure, you don't need to be able to identify every single dubious object.

The important takeaway here is that objects are more restrictive than modifiers.

Whether you must, can, or can't have an object is determined by the verb and a dash of context, but modifiers can always be added or taken away.

That's all you really need to remember! 😊 

You have a try.

Write a couple of sentences and see if you can deliberately exclude or include objects, to make sure you understand the difference.

Write a sentence using a verb that has no complements.
Write a sentence using a verb that has at least 1 complement.

If you're really curious and want a sure way to test whether something is an object or a modifier, you can use something called the 'did so' test. (Linguists create these kinds of tests all the time, so that they can uncover all the hidden structure in language that people just know subconsciously.)

Setting up the test

Let's test the prepositional phrases in this sentence as an example:

San went to the duck pond in the morning.

First, we need an anchoring sentence, which should include all the same basic components as our test sentence:

Mai went to the fair in the afternoon. San went to the duck pond in the morning.

We're going to replace parts of the test sentence with "did so", and see what sounds okay and what sounds weird.

Note: You might need to grab some friends for this, because everyone speaks a little differently and might disagree on what "sounds weird"—it's not that anybody is wrong; they just have a slightly different dialect with slightly different rules.

(Our assessment of "weirdness" at Writelike is based on the Standard Australian English dialect, but this example should also work for Standard British and Standard American English, and we think it's likely to work for other English dialects too.)

Applying the test

Here is how we would use 'did so' to test whether the phrase "in the morning" is an object or a modifier:

Mai went to the fair in the afternoon. San did so in the morning.

We've replaced the verb and the prepositional phrase that we are not testing with 'did so'. It sounds fine, which means that the times the subjects go ("in the afternoon" & "in the morning") are modifiers.

What about "to the duck pond"?

Mai went to the fair in the afternoon. San did so to the duck pond.

This should sound at least a little bit odd. This means that the places being gone to ("to the fair" & "to the duck pond") are objects.

Mai went to the fair in the afternoon. San went to the duck pond in the morning.

 

Want to see something a bit weird?

Let's change the verb to 'run':

Mai ran to the fair in the afternoon. San did so to the duck pond.

The second sentence stayed the same as when we used the verb 'to go', but now it sounds fine! That's because the verb 'to run' doesn't have any objects, so the prepositional phrase "to the duck pond" is now a modifier!

Mai ran to the fair in the afternoon. San ran to the duck pond in the morning.

Tricky, right? But you can see how running little experiments like this can help reveal the underlying rules of a language.

That's everything you need to know about clause objects, so let's write a checkpoint piece.

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