Objects have traditionally taken a back seat to subjects in most research
into grammatical relations-and justifiably so, it could seem, in as much as subject is the primary grammatical relation outranking the relationally secondary objects in overall significance. Indeed one might have hoped that almost all that is to be known about objects would conveniently be obtained as a by-product of work, much intensified in recent years,on subjects, all objects being essentially nothing but non-subjects...