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e.g. We gave the child a toy.I sent the man the information.In these examples, the words child and man are said to be the indirect objects of theverbs gave and sent. Indirect objects refer to things which receive indirectly theactions described by the verbs. In the above examples, the words toy and informationare the direct objects of the verbs.Indirect objects usually refer to living things.It is possible for a sentence containing an indirect object to be rewritten by placing apreposition before the indirect object. When this is done, the original indirect objectcan be regarded either as the indirect object of the verb, or as the object of thepreposition.For example, the sentence We gave the child a toy, can be rewritten as follows:We gave a toy to the child.In the rewritten sentence, child can be regarded either as the indirect object of theverb gave, or as the object of the preposition to.The following examples illustrate the position of the indirect object in a sentence. Thedirect object, toy, is printed in bold type, and the indirect object, child, is underlined.e.g. We gave the child a toy.We gave a toy to the child.When an indirect object is not preceded by a preposition, the indirect object must beplaced before the direct object. Thus, in the sentence We gave the child a toy, theindirect object child is placed before the direct object toy.However, when an indirect object i? preceded by a preposition, the indirect objectmust be placed after the direct object. In the sentence We gave a toy to the child, theindirect object child is preceded by the preposition to. Therefore, the indirect object,child is placed after the direct object toy.The object which is placed last in a sentence tends to receive greater emphasis thanthe object which is placed first. Thus, the word order of a sentence can be varied inorder to give greater emphasis to one object or the other. For instance, in the sentenceWe lent the teacher a book, the direct object book is slightly emphasized. However, inthe sentence We lent a book to the teacher, the indirect object teacher isemphasized.See Exercises 6 and 7.A few English verbs, such as to describe, to distribute, to explain and to say, can takean indirect object only when the indirect object is preceded by a preposition. In thefollowing examples, the direct objects are printed in bold type, and the indirectobjects are underlined.e.g. He described his experiences to the reporters.They distributed the leaflets to their friends.We explained the situation to the participants.