Charge $10 from/to me

prepositions

Double-object verbs can be used in two structures,
e.g. He gave me this book. = He gave this book to me.

What about 'charge' (in the sense of asking for payment)?
For 'They charged me $10.', what should be the preposition in 'They charged $10 to/from me.'?

I know 'They charged me $10.' is the usual way to say it, but sometimes the description of the person charged can be very long (e.g. They charged Mr. Smith of the operations department of ABC Company $10.).

'to' is suggested ('Please charge this amount to my credit card/my account.') here: Charge payment "to", "on", or "against" a credit card/an account; charge a credit card/account/a person "with"an amount

But this sounds like an accounting context. Is it the same for the case above?

Best Answer

(1a) The verb charge can take a direct object whose referent is the person charged (the DO often followed by a money phrase in relevant examples):

(1b) Measure phrases are best considered not as an object but as a separate category.

  • I walked 10 miles.

  • It took her 3 hours.

  • It cost me £12.

Note that these resist or disallow passivisation, unlike 'Tom bought 10 books' or 'Tom gave Jill a book.'

And prepositional alternatives are not readily available here:

  • *It cost £12 off/to/for me.

  • *It took 3 hours of/off/to/... her.

(But note

  • It cost £12 for me just to get onto the platform.)

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(2) The verb charge can alternatively take a direct object whose referent is the commodity being charged for:

  • Charge the meal to me.
  • Shall we charge the flowers to your account? [CD]

These are inflexible, with the DO followed by a to-phrase indicating the person, account etc to be debited. They don't allow dative transformation (*Charge me the meal.)

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In your case, using a rewrite makes most sense:

  • Mr. Smith, of the operations department of ABC Company, was charged $10 [by ...].
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