Fill in the blank with the correct option: In the sentence "She gave him a present.", 'him' is the :

Question

Accepted Answer

The correct option is 2:

When we analyze the sentence, "She gave him a present," we are dealing with a transitive verb, "gave," which requires objects to complete its meaning. Specifically, this sentence features a ditransitive verb, meaning it takes two objects: a direct object and an indirect object. The direct object is the recipient of the action—it answers the question "What did the subject give?" In this case, "a present" is what was given. The indirect object, on the other hand, is the *recipient* of the direct object, answering the question "To whom or for whom did the action occur?" In the structure Subject + Verb + Indirect Object + Direct Object (S-V-IO-DO), the word *him* immediately follows the verb and denotes the person who received the present. Therefore, *him* is the indirect object because it is the beneficiary of the giving action, and it usually precedes the direct object when the sentence is constructed this way. A good test for the indirect object is to rephrase the sentence using a preposition (like *to* or *for*): "She gave a present to him." Since *him* functions as the object of the preposition *to* in the rephrased version, confirming its role as the recipient, we can definitively identify it as the indirect object in the original sentence.

The incorrect option is 1:
The direct object is "a present." The direct object is the noun or pronoun that receives the direct action of the verb. If we ask, "She gave *what*?" the answer is "a present," not "him."

The incorrect option is 3:
The subject of the sentence is "She." The subject performs the action of the verb, and it typically appears at the beginning of the sentence. *Him* is an objective case pronoun, whereas the subject requires a subjective case pronoun (like *he* or *she*).

The incorrect option is 4:
The predicate refers to the entire part of the sentence that contains the verb and provides information about the subject, encompassing "gave him a present." The term *predicate* refers to a grammatical unit (a clause or phrase) and not a single constituent like the pronoun *him*.