"Get me a piece of paper"

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rohanvora

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"Bring me a pen"
"Do me a favor"
"Get me a piece of paper"

What kind of sentences are these?

Why do these sentences not have 'for' before 'me'.

Many thanks before hand. :)
 

Mehrgan

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"Bring me a pen"
"Do me a favor"
"Get me a piece of paper"

What kind of sentences are these?

Why do these sentences not have 'for' before 'me'.

Many thanks before hand. :)


***not a teacher***
In English some verbs can take two objects, mostly a thing (direct object) and a person (indirect object). Most of the times the indirect object comes before the direct one, just as in "Bring me a pen". But it's also possible to have the direct object before the indirect one, but in this case you need to use a preposition: "Bring a pen for me."

In some cases it's not possible to change this order. For example:

Please explain this plan to me. (correct)
Please explain me this plan. (incorrect)

Hope it helps.
 

BobK

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"Bring me a pen"
"Do me a favor"
"Get me a piece of paper"

What kind of sentences are these?

Why do these sentences not have 'for' before 'me'.

Many thanks before hand. :)

You can (although most people wouldn't) say 'Get for me a piece of paper'; what is idiomatic is 'While you're shopping, would you get some Air Mail paper for me?' (Probably a bad example; since the coming of e-mail I guess there's a generation out there who don't know what 'Air Mail paper' is; you can substitute whatever noun suits your needs!)

In Old English (a thousand years ago) many words were declined - they had endings that signalled what they were doing in a sentence; for example, the preposition 'for' had to be followed by a dative ending. This doesn't happen any more, but a few fossils have kept traces of this grammatical form; for example, the word 'nonce' is derived from 'for then ones'.

So the current grammar of English treats 'for' as Mehrgan explained; the history behind it is that there was once a dative form of 'me'; so often there are two (or more) ways of dealing with 'for me'. (But if etymology doesn't 'float you boat' [=roughly 'entertain you'] you can forget all about the dative. ;-)


b
 
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