1066: Control Nov 9, 2017

Ostensibly, the clauses "he gave me the gift" and "he gave the gift to me" have have the same meaning, as each word has the same syntactic function in both, i.e. 'he' is the subject', 'gave' is the only verb, 'me' is the direct object, and 'the gift' is the indirect object. This rearrangement is true of sentences with 'give' as the main verb that have a direct object and indirect object, as well as other such verbs such as 'brought', 'ask', and more. The difference between the two original sentences however is control, which is to say the how the interpreted subject—which is in control—relates to the elements of the predicate. Generally, elements closer to the subject after the verb are said to be in higher control, so while is would be acceptable to say "he gave to me the book" is sounds a bit clunkier and perhaps archaic, but because more focus, so to speak, is put onto 'me' in that construction, its role as an indirect object is understood without the preposition.