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My boss ordered me to go on business trip to Germany.

I am trying to describe this without to-infinitive nor that-clause. My example is as follows:

My boss ordered business trip to Germany to me.

I think my example is incorrect because I cannot find such usage on the Internet and dictionaries. Could you please advise me on this.

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  • 2
    My boss ordered me to Germany on a business trip. - like that?
    – Davo
    May 1, 2017 at 19:40
  • (As a learner) I was ordered a business trip to Germany {by my boss}. :-)
    – Cardinal
    May 1, 2017 at 21:27
  • "My boss sent me to Germany on a business trip."
    – The Photon
    May 2, 2017 at 5:32

3 Answers 3

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In English, when the verb order is used to mean "to command someone (to do something)", its direct object is the person so commanded:

The captain ordered them to stand at attention.

and the complement is a clause that uses the marked infinitive, there, to stand.

I think you are confusing the meaning above with a different meaning, where order means "to prescribe":

The doctor ordered antibiotics for me.

Now, it is possible to use a trip as if it were medical treatment, jokingly:

Boss: You have been working too hard. You have been under too much stress. I am ordering a trip to Tahiti for you.

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Unless you are ordering an object, you are pretty much always going to need a to-infinitive with "order" (when it means "command"), I think. At least colloquially.

Davo's comment "my boss ordered me to Germany" fulfills your request technically I guess, but I think there's an understood "to go" in there. "My boss ordered me [to go] to Germany." So while the infinitive's not technically in the sentence, it's still constructed that way, and those words are elided.

I could hear something like "My boss ordered me on a business trip to Germany" but it's still got the elided "to go" in there, and it sounds a little clunky to my ear. I probably wouldn't use it, though it may be technically correct.

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Verbs (or rather, particular senses of verbs) have their own specific subcategorisation frames, which specify the kinds of arguments they may take. These are usually not predictable (different verbs with similar meanings may have different frames) and it is usually ungrammatical to use an argument which does not match an available frame for a verb.

Order in the sense of "command" normally takes the person ordered as direct object, and an infinitive clase with "to" for the action; both are required.

As striped yak pointed out, there is another possibility where an implied "to go" is omitted, so we could say that order in the sense of "command to go" or "send" can take a direct object for the person ordered, and an indirect object with to for the destination. I think this is a rather rare construction (the GloWbE corpus has only three instances of "order [personal pronoun] to [proper noun]", against 602 instances of "order [personal prounun] to [infinitive]").

But i nthis sense there is no frame available such as you are asking for. There is no explanation for this: it is just a fact about the English verb "order".

[With a different meaning, "request from a supplier", order has a different subcategorisation frame: the thing requested as direct object and the supplier as indirect object with "from". Eg "I ordered a pizza from the take-away". ]

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