Juanito sacó la basura. (direct object = basura)- Nosotros pagamos los impuestos. (direct object = impuestos)
Not all verbs are used with direct objects! Verbs that do an action to something or someone use a direct object, and are called transitive verbs. Verbs that merely denote an action don’t need a direct object and are called intransitive verbs.
- Ellos vivieron en Puerto Rico. (intransitive: “En Puerto Rico” is not the object of the action, it’s just a prepositional phrase saying where the action happened.)
- Yo corrí. (intransitive: I just ran.)
- Yo comencé el ensayo. (transitive: “The essay” is the direct object, it’s what I started.)
When speaking our native languages, we rarely notice this kind of grammatical category, but when learning a new language it helps a lot to be able to use grammatical terminology to define what kinds of words are used and when they are used. This will be very useful in the next section when we start exploring Spanish object pronouns.
