SEMANTICS: the object that is affected by the action expressed by the verb.
EXAMPLE: in He ate a sandwich, a sandwich denotes the
affected object because the sandwich gradually disappears in the eating-process.
In contrast, his father in He gave his father a book or He saw
his father does not denote an affected object. A verb like eat is called
an affectedness verb. The complement the wagon in he loaded the wagon with
hay is called totally affected, in contrast to the wagon in he loaded
hay on the wagon (only part of the wagon may be affected). The notion affected
object is closely related to the notion patient.
|LIT.||Jackendoff, R. (1990)|
Tenny, C. (1987)