A ditransitive verb has two objects: a recipient (the person who gets something) and a theme (the thing they get). Noen ga ham en bok — "someone gave him a book": ham is the recipient, en bok the theme. When you passivise such a verb, you face a choice that simple monotransitives never raise: which object becomes the subject? Norwegian lets you promote either, and on top of that offers a third, recipient-focused route — the få-passive. This page goes deeper than the basic passive pages (see verbs/bli-passive and verbs/s-passive for the bli/-s mechanics) and concentrates on the two-object promotion problem.
The verbs in play
Recipient-theme verbs form a coherent class that all behave the same way under passivisation: gi (give), sende (send), tilby (offer), vise (show), love (promise), tildele (award/allocate), nekte (deny/refuse), betale (pay), fortelle (tell), skylde (owe), overrekke (hand over), innvilge (grant). Each takes someone (recipient) and something (theme).
Styret tildelte forskeren en pris.
The board awarded the researcher a prize. (active — forskeren = recipient, en pris = theme)
Promoting the recipient: the default in Norwegian
Norwegian — like English, and unlike many other languages — readily makes the recipient the passive subject. The recipient moves to the front, becomes the subject, and the theme stays put as a retained object:
Han ble gitt en bok i bursdagsgave.
He was given a book as a birthday present.
Jeg ble tilbudt jobben på stedet.
I was offered the job on the spot.
Hun ble nektet adgang til møtet.
She was denied access to the meeting.
Forskeren ble tildelt prisen for sitt livsverk.
The researcher was awarded the prize for her life's work.
This recipient-passive is the natural, neutral choice for most of these verbs, exactly as in English he was given a book. The theme (en bok, jobben, adgang, prisen) remains as a bare retained object after the participle — no preposition needed.
Promoting the theme: the rarer alternative
You can instead promote the theme to subject. Then the recipient appears either as a bare object after the participle or, more commonly and more naturally, inside a til-phrase:
Boka ble gitt ham av en god venn.
The book was given (to) him by a good friend. (theme-subject, bare recipient — slightly formal/literary)
Boka ble gitt til ham som takk for hjelpen.
The book was given to him in thanks for his help. (theme-subject, til-phrase — the everyday version)
Prisen ble tildelt henne under en seremoni i Oslo.
The prize was awarded to her at a ceremony in Oslo.
The bare-recipient version (Boka ble gitt ham) is grammatical but has a slightly formal, almost old-fashioned ring; in living usage Norwegians overwhelmingly prefer til ham when the theme is the subject. So: recipient-subject keeps the theme bare (ble gitt en bok), but theme-subject usually puts the recipient in a til-phrase (ble gitt til ham).
Which to choose: end-weight and information flow
The choice is not free in discourse — it is governed by what is given (old) information and what is new, and by end-weight. The known, topical participant gravitates to subject; the newsworthy, heavier participant goes to the end. If the recipient is a pronoun (light, known) and the theme is the news, promote the recipient: Han ble tilbudt en helt ny stilling. If the theme is the established topic and you want to report what happened to it, promote the theme: Manuskriptet ble til slutt sendt til forlaget.
Søkeren ble nektet oppholdstillatelse uten nærmere begrunnelse.
The applicant was denied a residence permit without further justification. (recipient-subject: applicant is topic, the denial is news)
Oppholdstillatelsen ble innvilget etter en lang klageprosess.
The residence permit was granted after a long appeals process. (theme-subject: the permit is topic)
The få-passive: a dedicated recipient-resultative
Norwegian has a third strategy English lacks a clean match for: the få-passive, built with få ("get") + a past participle. It promotes the recipient to subject and frames the event as a result the recipient comes to enjoy or undergo. English he was given X uses be; Norwegian can use bli (ble gitt) for the plain event, or få (fikk tildelt) to foreground the recipient as the beneficiary of a completed outcome.
Han fikk tildelt en pris for innsatsen.
He was awarded a prize for his effort. (recipient as beneficiary of the result)
Vi fikk tilsendt papirene i posten.
We were sent the papers in the post / We got the papers sent to us.
Hun fikk innvilget søknaden sin.
Her application was granted (she got her application granted).
The shape is få (finite) + theme + past participle, with the recipient as subject. The participle (tildelt, tilsendt, innvilget) is the same form used in the bli-passive, but the auxiliary is få, and the nuance is resultative and recipient-centred: the subject ends up having the thing done for or to them. This is the natural Norwegian way to say "X got Y done for them / ended up with Y", and it is extremely common in administrative and everyday register alike. (For få as a modal-like verb generally, see verbs/modal-få.)
A close relative is få vite / få høre / få se — "get to know / hear / see" — the idiomatic way to express coming into information:
Jeg fikk vite det først i går.
I only found out about it yesterday / I was only told yesterday.
• ble gitt — plain passive event ("was given")
• fikk tildelt / fikk tilsendt — resultative, recipient as beneficiary ("got awarded / got sent")
• fikk vite — recipient comes into information ("got to know / was told").
The agent phrase
As with any bli-passive, an explicit agent goes in an av-phrase, and it attaches the same way whichever object you promoted. With ditransitives the agent is often left out — the whole point of these passives is usually to background the giver — but it is available:
Prisen ble overrakt vinneren av selveste statsministeren.
The prize was handed to the winner by the prime minister himself.
Vi ble lovet svar innen en uke av saksbehandleren.
We were promised an answer within a week by the caseworker.
Note that the få-passive resists an av-agent more strongly than the bli-passive does — because få centres the recipient's experience, an explicit agent often sounds redundant. Prefer bli + av-agent when you genuinely need to name the giver.
Quick comparison
| Structure | Subject | Example | Flavour |
|---|---|---|---|
| bli + ptcp (recipient-subj) | recipient | Han ble gitt prisen | neutral event |
| bli + ptcp (theme-subj) | theme | Prisen ble gitt (til) ham | theme is topic |
| få + ptcp | recipient | Han fikk tildelt prisen | resultative, recipient-focus |
| få vite/høre/se | recipient | Han fikk vite det | coming into information |
Common Mistakes
1. Assuming only the direct object (theme) can be promoted. Some learners — especially those who first met the passive through languages that block recipient-promotion — avoid han ble gitt, even though English allows the very same thing.
❌ En bok ble gitt ham av meg. (as the default way to say 'he was given a book')
Stilted — theme-promotion sounds formal here; the natural choice is recipient-promotion.
✅ Han ble gitt en bok av meg.
He was given a book by me.
2. Adding a preposition to the retained theme. After a recipient-subject passive, the theme is a bare object.
❌ Hun ble tilbudt til jobben.
Incorrect — no til before the retained theme.
✅ Hun ble tilbudt jobben.
She was offered the job.
3. Using bli where the recipient-resultative få-passive is idiomatic. Bli is not wrong, but få is the natural choice when the focus is the recipient ending up with something.
❌ Jeg ble vitt det i går.
Doubly wrong — 'vite' has no participle 'vitt', and the idiom is the få-construction.
✅ Jeg fikk vite det i går.
I found out about it yesterday.
4. Forgetting the participle stays put in the få-passive (it is not an infinitive). The verb after få here is a past participle, not the bare infinitive.
❌ Han fikk tildele en pris.
Wrong — 'fikk tildele' means 'got to award' (he did the awarding); not what's intended.
✅ Han fikk tildelt en pris.
He was awarded a prize. (past participle tildelt — he received it)
5. Mis-spelling the participles. The two you will use most are irregular-looking.
❌ Han ble gjitt prisen, og hun ble tildellt en plass.
Mis-spelled — the participles are gitt and tildelt.
✅ Han ble gitt prisen, og hun ble tildelt en plass.
He was given the prize, and she was allotted a seat.
Key Takeaways
- Ditransitive passives force a choice: promote the recipient (default, Han ble gitt en bok) or promote the theme (rarer, often with til: Boka ble gitt til ham).
- After recipient-promotion the theme is a bare retained object — no preposition.
- The få-passive (fikk tildelt, fikk tilsendt, fikk vite) is the dedicated recipient-resultative — English's was given with a recipient focus, but built on få instead of bli.
- The choice is driven by information flow and end-weight: the topic becomes subject, the news goes last. An av-agent is available with bli, far rarer with få.
Now practice Norwegian
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Start learning Norwegian→Related Topics
- Advanced Passive: Agents, Impersonal, få-passiveB2 — Beyond the basic passive — the av-agent phrase, the impersonal subjectless passive that even works on intransitive verbs (det danses), recipient promotion in ditransitives (hun ble tilbudt jobben), the få-passive (han fikk utbetalt lønna), and modal + passive.
- Double Objects and Ditransitive VerbsB1 — Verbs like gi, sende and vise take two objects, and Norwegian offers two orders — gi noen noe (recipient first, no preposition) or gi noe til noen (with til) — with a special constraint when both objects are pronouns.
- få: Get, Be Allowed, ManageB1 — The multifunctional få — main verb 'get/receive', the permission/prohibition modal (får ikke = 'is NOT allowed to'), 'manage to', and the resultative få + supine ('get something done').
- The s-PassiveB1 — How to form the synthetic -s passive (selges, åpnes, gjøres) and why Norwegian reserves it for rules, signs and the present tense.