Why is it "you lied TO me" and not "you lied me"

Question

Why do we say

You tricked me
You fooled me
You deceived me
You offended me
You kissed me

And so on and so on

BUT you lied TO me and not you lied me?

Answer 1

Those are the rules. The rules are not always logical.

English has some verbs that have an object. And some verbs that do not.

The verb "lie" is similar to verbs like "talk". These verbs do not have a direct object. But they can (optionally) be followed by a prepositional phrase.

He talked to me.

He lied to me.

Other verbs have a direct object, which may be required. This is just a rule of grammar and not based on any logic or meaning.

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Grammar rules are arbitrary.

Answer 2

As other answers have pointed out, there are lots of rules in English which you just have to follow and there isn't necessarily any logic behind them. But I think in this case there is a fairly decent reason.

In "you lied to me", the word "me" is not a direct object of the verb; it is an object of preposition. Consider these examples:

• You lied (to me)
• You lied (about her)
• You lied (under oath)
• You lied (in your testimony)
• You lied (under oath) (to me) (about her)

I put brackets around the different objects of preposition. "To", "about", "in" and "under" have different meanings, which change the interpretation of the sentence, and it is possible to use multiple objects of preposition. So there is a logical reason to include the preposition "to", because the meaning of the sentence depends on which preposition is used.

That doesn't exactly explain why "deceived" takes a direct object but "lie" doesn't. But consider the verbs below, which might all describe the same action:

• You lied.
• You deceived me.
• You defamed her.
• You falsified your testimony.
• You perjured yourself.

Except for "lied" which takes no direct object, each of the other verbs takes a different direct object. That means we can choose which verb to use based on which aspect is most relevant, or which aspect we want to emphasise the importance of.

So that is, sort of, a reason that "deceived" takes a direct object but "lied" doesn't: if we didn't have those different words for focus or emphasis, then we would probably invent them.

Note also that except for "deceived" which takes "me" as a direct object, the other verbs can also take "to me" as an object of preposition: "you lied (to me)", "you defamed her (to me)", "you falsified your testimony (to me)", "you perjured yourself (to me)". So the reason why you can't say "you lied me" is almost the same as the reason you can't say "you defamed her me", "you falsified your testimony me" or "you perjured yourself me". It's also almost the same as the reason why you can't say "you lied her" or "you lied your testimony".

Answer 3

One thing you'll notice about most verbs where you have to say "to someone" or "at someone". The verb describes an action which stands on its own. So

She lied.

is a complete sentence in its own right and needs no object. If she has said something which is untrue, it doesn't matter if someone is there to hear it or not - it is still a lie. But your other examples of

You tricked me
You fooled me
You deceived me

are all actions which inherently are done to another person. So they all require an object.

There are plenty of other examples. For example, the difference between

He jumped on me.
He tackled me.

Now jumping is something you can do without needing a target, so you can say

He jumped.

and still be grammatically correct. If you want to be more specific about how he jumped, you can add a preposition and an object, of course. But tackling is inherently something that you have to do to someone.

Answer 4

As other users have said, that's the rule, it doesn't always make sense, you just have to follow it.

Graham made an excellent point in his answer that I wanted to follow up on. In your examples, those actions are all things which have some sort of impact on the other person:

• You tricked me: I did something I wouldn't have otherwise done because I was tricked
• You fooled me: (Similar to "tricked", the two are mostly synonyms)
• You deceived me: I believed something that was not true because of what you did
• You offended me: I was harmed (emotionally) by what you said.
• You kissed me: I was physically affected by what you did.

The simple act of lying does not necessarily impact the other person in the same way as these examples. Even in the "deceived" case, where "to deceive" and "to lie" are similar in meaning, "deceive" implies that the receiver of the deceit actually believed the deceit; the act of lying does not implicitly mean that the receiver of the lie believed the lie and/or acted in any way on that lie. Therefore, it cannot be said that the telling of a lie impacts in any way the hearer of the lie. Therefore, the receiver of a lie is not the direct object of the verb "to lie".

I have no idea if this is the etymology of why "to lie" does not have a direct object, but this seems to make sense to me.

Another possible reason is that, were the verb "to lie" to take a direct object, there are 2 possible meanings of that direct object which carry equal weight (in my opinion): The hearer of the lie, and also the subject of the lie. While the verbs above very clearly most impact their direct object, the question is, would "you lied me" carry the meaning "you lied to me", or "you lied about me"? Obviously context is important, but given that the direct object tends to be defined as the thing most affected by the action in the verb, would someone being lied to be more or less affected than someone being lied about? I think that's a philosophical question, and probably another reason why the word doesn't carry a direct object, because it's unresolved.

Answer 5

Just rules... that's it. The reason we say "you lied to me" instead of "you lied me" is because the word "lie" is a transitive verb, which means that it requires a direct object to complete its meaning. In this case, the direct object is "to me," which specifies the person who was lied to. On the other hand, the phrases "you tricked me," "you fooled me," "you deceived me," and "you offended me" all use intransitive verbs, which do not require a direct object to complete their meaning. "Kissed" is a little bit more complicated, as it can be used as either a transitive or intransitive verb depending on the context. In the sentence "you kissed me," the verb is transitive and the direct object is "me," indicating the person who was kissed.