Learn English – send something to someone or somewhere

indirect-objectsprepositional-objectsword-order

Background:

I am writing a computer application which can understand English sentence. For that purpose, I was preparing frames of each word. For example:

send something to recipient|place

Since to can be defined as separate frame;

to recipient|place

So the frame for send can be defined as

send something

Now I found a phrase;

"Send him my love"

Question

Is there any grammar rule which transforms Send my love to him into Send him my love, or it is word-specific?

send recipient something

send something to recipient

Best Answer

I got to know about dative case after receiving some really helpful comments. And I found a very helpful document about dative shifting.

Explanation which exactly meets with my question;

3a John sent the parcel to Mary

3b John sent Mary the parcel

4a John sent the parcel to the States

4b * John sent the States the parcel

In both 3 and 4 the direct object, [the parcel], travels towards the indirect object, [Mary] or [the States], making it the Goal of the action. The semantic difference is that in 3 [Mary] is the Beneficiary of the action, the person for whom the parcel is intended, but in 4 [the States] has no such role. For this shift to occur it seems that we must have the right type of verb and the right type of indirect object.

Frames

[sender] send (smth) (to [recipient])
[sender] send ([recipient] smth)    ;where recipient is a beneficiary.
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