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I am really confused with indirect and direct object...
I am in need to find the sentence pattern for this sentence.

He showed kindness to his parents.

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closed as off topic by Carlo_R., tchrist, MετάEd, Mr. Shiny and New 安宇, Cameron Oct 17 '12 at 6:03

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2 Answers

up vote 1 down vote

Your original sentence has no indirect object.

  • He showed kindness to his parents.

Here kindness is the direct object, and his parents is the object of the preposition to — it is not an indirect object there.

In this sentence:

  • He showed his parents kindness.

Now his parents is indeed an indirect object.

Similarly, this has an indirect object:

  • He showed me it.

But this does not:

  • He showed it to me.
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up vote 0 down vote

The pattern is N-AV-n-N (subject, action verb, indirect object, direct object). The "to his parents" is the indirect object. The "to" is always implied to come before an indirect object, and can sometimes be omitted. The sentence can be re-worded to omit it:

He showed his parents kindness.

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without rewording it the pattern is subject,verb,direct object, indirect object. am i correct. – cdummy Oct 16 '12 at 20:49
Yes, but the pattern is still such even with re-wording. In both cases though, the "parents" is the indirect object. – Zetta Suro Oct 16 '12 at 20:50

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