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I'd like to know if the objects of the verb 'ask' must follow an order. If so what is that order? Should the first object be the person (someone) or the thing (something)?

For example: Will you ask for that money to your mother? or Will you ask your mother for that money?

João Victor Rabelo de Sousa
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2 Answers2

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In general the order matters to some extent. Consider the following:

Ask for money.
Ask your mother.
Ask Tuesday.
Ask on Tuesday for money.
Ask for money on Tuesday.
Ask your mother for money on Tuesday.
Ask your mother on Tuesday for money.
On Tuesday ask your mother for money.
Ask your mother for money.
Ask for money from your mother.

All the above are understandable.

The last form is rather ambiguous, you could be asking your brother to give you money that came from your mother. The penultimate sentence is preferable.

So, most often, You'd place the recipient of the request earlier in the sentence than what is being requested. Usually the recipient of the request would be first.

There are definitely preferred orders for sentences of this form but I don't know of any firm rules.

RegDwigнt
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RedGrittyBrick
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This is a transitive, but not bi- (or di-) transitive, use of the verb ask. I.e, in this context it means 'request', rather than 'address a question to someone', and it has only a direct object, rather than bitransitive ask, which has both direct and indirect objects.

  • She asked Harry what the answer was.
    (bitransitive: Harry = indirect object, what the answer was = direct object)
  • She asked Harry for some help with her homework.
    (transitive: Harry = direct object)

The thing that's requested is the object of for, and in fact if the object is indefinite, obvious, or irrelevant, it can be deleted, making ask for effectively equivalent to request.

  • She asked for/requested some help with her homework.
John Lawler
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  • Ask can even be tritransitive, am I correct? She asked Harry for the dirty on her husband. – Talia Ford Sep 27 '13 at 21:52
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    @Talia Ford: No - here, for instance, 'on her husband' is an adjectival modifying 'the dirty'. This example isn't even ditransitive. Compare She asked Harry for some news about her husband. with She asked Harry for some help with her homework. above. – Edwin Ashworth Sep 27 '13 at 22:23
  • There are no tritransitive verbs, to my knowledge, in any language. 1, 2, or 3 arguments, that's it. (Well, there are impersonals like It's raining that have no arguments; but that's a very small set of constructions.) For details see the Logic Guide and the Verb Phrase Guide – John Lawler Sep 27 '13 at 22:32
  • I thank both of you for being forthcoming. Respect. (I also feel a little stupid, but that's okay. Live to learn and you'll learn to live.) – Talia Ford Sep 27 '13 at 23:12
  • No need to feel stupid; grammar is complicated stuff, and most English speakers are clueless about it because it's not taught in Anglophone schools. – John Lawler Sep 27 '13 at 23:14
  • @John Lawler: How many arguments would you say Mike put me a bottle under the counter (which is certainly quite acceptable in N England) has? – Edwin Ashworth Sep 28 '13 at 16:14
  • That's a transform of Mike put a bottle under the counter for me, with the benefactive for me triggering the Dative Alternation because you wind up possessing the bottle. So it's technically only transitive: Mike = Su, a bottle = DO. The benefactive-to-dative transformation essentially adds me = IO, but that's derived, not basic. – John Lawler Sep 28 '13 at 17:14
  • But then you could argue that all ditransitives, being 'derived not basic', should be considered merely transitives? – Edwin Ashworth Sep 28 '13 at 20:33
  • No. There are real verbs like give and tell that always have IOs, whether they're present in a sentence or not. The Dative alternation applies to them all. It can also be applied to any benefactive for phrase that has the same effect as a Dative, of transferring the DO to an individual. It's a special case, applied only to benefactives. Languages are full of things like that. – John Lawler Sep 29 '13 at 01:29
  • As is often the case, I'm struggling to reconcile different treatments I've come across in different grammars here. For instance, I've met the 'syntactic but not semantic' label being applied to 'direct objects' - I've even seen 'He led them a merry dance' labelled as ditransitive, when I'd definitely class 'a merry dance' as an adverbial objective, an ellipted form of 'in/on a merry dance'. – Edwin Ashworth Sep 29 '13 at 08:12
  • I don't know where the term "adverbial objective" comes from, but I'd just call a merry dance a noun phrase, and I'd agree it's the object of a deleted preposition. But it's not an argument of the predicate lead, any more than Tuesday would be; hence I wouldn't want to call it an "object" (or an "objective", which I presume means 'something "object"-like', like "gerund" and "gerundive"). Not a precise term, really. – John Lawler Sep 29 '13 at 17:12
  • The fact that there are so many different grammatical terms, all from different versions of "English grammar", with usually incompatible uses and understandings, is one of the reasons why the question/answer format is not ideal for discussing English grammar. – John Lawler Sep 29 '13 at 17:14
  • You must have examined different (approaches to) grammar in the many years you've spent studying the field. So have others, who are equally authoritative, but have come to prefer sometimes different analyses. Have you a pointer to laymen as to why grammar H say is to be preferred? – Edwin Ashworth Sep 29 '13 at 22:31
  • "Grammar H say"? – John Lawler Sep 29 '13 at 23:16
  • @John Lawler Sorry - I taught maths. Math. Just an 'unknown marker'. Is there any particular 'version of "English grammar" ' that you think interprets overall English usage best? – Edwin Ashworth Sep 30 '13 at 21:33
  • I think McCawley's The Syntactic Phenomena of English (2nd ed 1998, Chicago) does the job admirably. Of course it's not a usage manual; it's a grammar. It's in fact a college textbook, for a one-year course in English grammar and syntax in general. About as long and as hard as, say, a one-year course in topology, with set theory and foundations thrown in. – John Lawler Sep 30 '13 at 23:14
  • Thank you. I may sling out one or two others if I find a reasonably inexpensive copy. – Edwin Ashworth Oct 01 '13 at 07:40
  • You can start with my logic guide and verb phrase guide, to give you the flavor; they're based on the same theory as McCawley, with less attention to finegrain detail. I developed them as remedial materials for syntax students, covering what they should have learned in grammar school, if there were such a thing. – John Lawler Oct 01 '13 at 14:05