He helps people find happiness.
Is this an example of an Indirect Object (People) or an Object Complement (find happiness)?
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Please let me know whether my answer was helpful. If it was, please upvote and (potentially) accept it. Otherwise, I'd be happy to clarify anything!– user392938Commented Aug 1, 2020 at 6:50
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1 Answer
TL;DR
"People" is the direct object of "helps" and the subject of "find."
"Find" is a verb.
"Happiness" is the direct object of "find."
No, "find happiness" is not an object complement.
He helps people find happiness.
Let's assign a role to each word/phrase in the sentence. The key to the answer is that there are two verbs in the sentence: "helps" and "find."
"He" is the subject of the verb "helps."
"Helps" is the verb being completed by the subject "he."
These are very obvious. For the words/phrases below, I will explain why I have assigned them each role.
"People" is the direct object of the verb "helps." A direct object is a noun that is the recipient of the action of a transitive verb, which "to help" is (in this situation). "People" is being helped by "he," so "people" is the direct object. "People" is not the indirect object of the verb because "people" is being directly affected by the action of the verb, whereas an indirect object is affected, but not the primary object of the verb.
For example, look at the sentence "I gave him the book." The direct object is "book" because that is what is being directly given. The indirect object pronoun is "him" because "him" is who is receiving the book (affected by the action of the verb), but is not directly being given.
"People" also plays another role in this sentence. It is the subject of the verb "find." Therefore, "people" is both the direct object of one verb ("helps") and the subject of another ("find").
"Find" is the verb completed by "people."
"Happiness" is the direct object of the verb "find" because "people" is directly "finding" it.
An object complement must be a noun, an adjective, or a pronoun. Therefore, "find happiness" is not an object complement.
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I wouldn't quite go along with you, John. "People" is the syntactic object of "help", but only the understood (semantic) subject of the subordinate clause.– BillJCommented Jul 28, 2020 at 11:08
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@BillJ What part of speech (other than direct object of "helps") would it be? I kind of understand what you are saying, but I think having an example/answer could solidify it.– user392938Commented Jul 28, 2020 at 14:03
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"People" is certainly the syntactic object of "help". But "find happiness", like most non-finite clauses, has no overt subject, but we understand it as though it does have a subject, in this case "people". No word can simultaneously have more than one syntactic function in a clause.– BillJCommented Jul 28, 2020 at 14:25
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@BillJ Correct me if I'm wrong, but is "find" an infinitive of purpose with the "to" omitted? Or does the absence of a "to" prevent it from being that? If it is an infinitive of purpose, THIS site does reference there being a subject of the infinitive of purpose: "We can only use the infinitive of purpose..." Please check it out and let me know what you think.– user392938Commented Jul 28, 2020 at 14:45
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I can only comment on the OP's sentence as it was written, where "find happiness" is not a purpose adjunct but a catenative complement of "help". I don't want to be second-guessing some other possibility.– BillJCommented Jul 28, 2020 at 15:21