english summary

Question

Which sentence does Not contain both a direct object  and an indirect object?  a)I gave my mother a bouquet of flowers for her birthday.  b) Please reserve a meal for me.  c)I'm reading the newest edition of my favorite magazine.  d) Maggie is knitting her daughter a sweater.

Answer 1

Only sentence c), "I'm reading the newest edition of my favorite magazine," does not have both a direct and an indirect object. In c), the entire direct object is the newest edition of my favorite magazine, a noun phrase that consists of the head noun edition and contains the postmodifying prepositional phrase of my favorite magazine, which even though it also contains the noun phrase my favorite magazine, its head, magazine, is neither a direct nor indirect object in the sentence (though notionally, of course, it's a magazine you're reading and thus you might be misled into labelling that as the grammatical direct object of the sentence but structurally it's not).

 

Here are the direct and indirect objects in the other sentences, the presence of both of which thus precludes them from being the correct answer to your question:

 

a) I gave my mother a bouquet of flowers for her birthday

• direct object: a bouquet of flowers  (head noun bouquet)
• indirect object: my mother (head noun mother)

(Note also that in this sentence, for her birthday is not an indirect object--cf. b)--nor a phrase within the direct object but rather an adverbial of purpose.)

 

b) Please reserve a meal for me.

• direct object: a meal (head noun meal)
• indirect object: for me 

 

d) Maggie is knitting her daughter a sweater.

• direct object: a sweater (head noun sweater)
• indirect object: her daughter (head noun daughter)