Hello everybody,
It seems that I need some professional help.
I was taught that there are two patterns for the word “to give”: [color=green]to give somebody something, or [color=green]to give something to somebody.
Though, I’m reading a book called “Three Men in a Boat”, and I came across a sentence: “After that, he sat down and wrote out a prescription, and folded it up and [color=green]gave it me, and I put it in my pocket and went out.”
Earlier, I saw such a pattern in the book called “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland”. The sentence was: ‘They[color=green] gave it me,’ Humpty Dumpty continued thoughtfully, as he crossed one knee over the other and clasped his hands round it, ‘- for an un-birthday present.’
As those books were both written in the XIX century, I supposed that it might just be common then to speak in that way. Or, maybe, there are some special cases in modern English, too?
Thanks in advance for any explanations!
Hi,
You can look at: usingenglish.com/forum/threa … to-me-quot
and at: english-test.net/forum/ftopic12187.html
No reference found to it being strictly XIX century so far…
I believe ‘he gave it me’ is quite common in AmE.
‘He gave it to me’ is the preferred BrE term.
Hi Helenka,
The omission of ‘to’ in your quotations is none other than a playful variation on indicating the indirect object with ‘to’. Personally in conversation (perhaps showing irritation) I would say - Give it me/show it me.
Alan