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This page pertains to UD version 2.

iobj: indirect object

The indirect object of a verb is any nominal phrase that is a core argument of the verb but is not its subject or direct object. The two typical examples are

Павел дал Петру две груши . \n Pavel gave Peter two pears .
iobj(дал, Петру)
iobj(gave, Peter)
Женщины красятся хной . \n The women paint-their-hair with-henna .
iobj(красятся, хной)
iobj(paint-their-hair, with-henna)

However, Russian allows other semantic roles as additional objects. The morphological ru-feat/Case of the objects is dictated by verb valency.

In the following Russian example, the verb takes two arguments. One of them is direct object (patient), the other is indirect (addressee). It is parallel to how the English translation would be annotated (where there is no morphological case marking) and also to verbs of giving (cf. a similar sentence, he gave my daughter a class of maths).

Он преподает моей дочери математику . \n He teaches my daughter.Dat maths.Acc .
obj(преподает, математику)
iobj(преподает, дочери)
obj(teaches, maths.Acc)
iobj(teaches, daughter.Dat)

In general, if there is just one object, it should be labeled obj, regardless of the morphological case or semantic role. For example, преподавать “to teach” can take either the subject matter or the recipient as the only object, and in both cases it would be analyzed as the obj:

Он преподает математику . \n He teaches maths .
obj(преподает, математику)
obj(teaches, maths)
Он преподает студентам . \n He teaches students .
obj(преподает, студентам)
obj(teaches, students)

The one exception is when there is a clausal complement. Then the clausal complement is regarded as a “clausal direct object” and an object nominal will be an iobj, parallel to the simple ditransitive case:

Она сказала студентам , что сегодня вечером нужно учиться . \n She told students , that today evening they-needed to-study .
iobj(сказала, студентам)
ccomp(сказала, нужно)
iobj(told, students)
ccomp(told, they-needed)
Она рассказала студентам свой план . \n She told students her plan .
iobj(рассказала, студентам)
obj(рассказала, план)
iobj(told, students)
obj(told, plan)

If there are two or more objects, one of them should be obj and the others should be iobj. In such cases it is necessary to decide what is the most directly affected object (patient), and the accusative ru-feat/Case has priority over the dative, instrumental, and genitive cases.


iobj in other languages: [bej] [bg] [cop] [cs] [de] [el] [en] [es] [eu] [fr] [fro] [gsw] [gub] [hy] [it] [ja] [ka] [kk] [la] [no] [pcm] [pt] [qpm] [ro] [ru] [sl] [ssp] [sv] [swl] [tr] [u] [vi] [xcl] [yue] [zh]