Can a sentence have an indirect object without a direct object?
It can be argued that with to tell, which is normally a bitransitive verb taking both sorts of objects as in to tell someone something, can exist with just an indirect object alone.
- Have you told him yet?
There is an unspoken “something” that is being alluded to here, and that thing unsaid is the direct object, with the person receiving the information being in the indirect object position.
However, this analysis is not universally accepted. Others view this particular situation as one where the indirect object has passed to a direct one. The OED seems to be one of these; the following citation is taken from its entry for the verb tell:
trans. to tell a person (the originally indirect or dative personal object becoming the direct).
Note the parenthetical portion. They have stopped calling it an indirect object there. It’s the only object in sight, so it “must” be a direct one. I guess.
In other languages that have stronger case systems, this sort of use can take an indirect object by itself, and when it does, it is still marked in the dative’s indirect object case. So for example, the Spanish for tell me it is dímelo; if you wanted to add and tell her too while you’re at it, you would have to say dile to mean “tell her” using the dative enclitic pronoun le. You cannot use the accusative enclitic pronoun la, because it is still indirect. So they in Spanish do not reanalyse the remaining object as a direct one. It stays dative in their minds. It is that line of reasoning that leaves it as an indirect object for some English grammarians, too.
Now, you can construct that same situation in English, but to do so you have to go back to when English was what for us today was a foreign language. A thousand years ago when English had a more robust case system, you sometimes had certain verbs that took only a dative case pronoun for their complement without an accusative case one to go along with it. So one could (perhaps) say they only took an indirect object. However, most of the time we translate those uses from Old English and dative objects into regular direct objects today so as not to confuse people.
However, one rare place where that still occurs is in the frozen relic verbs meseem and methink, once spelled me seems and me thinks (or me thought and so on). There the Old English dative me, which in those expressions came before the actual verb, became stuck when it fossilized. We no longer think of it as being an indirect object. But it really is an isolated dative, because it is the very sort of “to/for me” kind of “dative of interest” you find in modern expressions like cry me a river or sing me a song. So meseems just means it seems to me. That’s why the singular is meseems, as in Meseems unlikely that he shall pursue us meaning it seems unlikely to me.
But those are just curiosities from the museum case, not productive uses. If you abbreviate sing me a song to sing me, folks are going to think that use of me has switched to a direct object use from an indirect object one, and wonder what it is you really meant by that.
There seems to be some confusion about what an indirect object is.
The OP has probably learned that in a sentence like Thomas gave Sue a book, Sue is the indirect object. So far so good. The sentence is equivalent to Thomas gave a book to Sue, so the OP goes on to assume (and a good English instructor will easily make this mistake) that to Sue is also an indirect object. Here is the wrong turn. Sue is the recipient in both cases, but recipient is a meaning category, while direct object is a grammatical category.
If two clauses have the same or very similar meanings, it doesn't mean that all of the corresponding arguments are of the same grammatical category (think of "argument" as a participant in an event; or if you are a computer programmer, think of verbs as functions and other parts of the clause as arguments).
Languages have hundreds or thousands of constructions, each with particular grammatical properties. The constructions have partially overlapping meaning properties. This permits nuance of expression. Generally you will have to recognize a grammatical structure separate from the meaning. Coincidence in meaning should not be taken to imply coincidence in grammatical structure.
For reference, I've quoted relevant parts of Huddleston & Pullum's (2002) treatment (Chapter 4, §§4, 4.3) below. You can get the student edition of the book more cheaply (the passage suggests that the answer to the OP's clause is yes, but only in a "noncanonical" clause).
Of the two types of object, the direct object (Od) occurs in both monotransitive and ditransitive clauses, whereas the indirect object (Oi) occurs in canonical clauses only in ditransitives.
At the general level, the direct object may be defined as a grammatically distinct element of clause structure which in canonical agent--patient clauses expresses the patient role. Direct object arguments are associated with a wide range of semantic roles, but in other canonical clauses than those expressing agent--patient situations, the direct object has the same grammatical properties as the NP expressing the patient in agent--patient clauses.
The general definition of indirect object is that it is a distinct element of clause structure characteristically associated with the semantic role of recipient. Again this is not the only role we find (though the range is much narrower than with the direct object), but indirect objects behave grammatically like the NP expressing the recipient with verbs like give, lend, offer, sell.
The terms direct and indirect are based on the idea that in ditransitive clauses the Od argument is more directly affected or involved in the process than the Oi argument. In I gave Kim the key, for example, it is the key that is actually transferred, while Kim is involved only as an endpoint in the transfer. Characteristically the Od in ditransitives is obligatory while the Oi is omissible, as in He lent (them) his car, She offered (us) $400 for it, and it is plausible to see this is as reflecting a more direct involvement, a greater centrality on the part of the Od argument.
...
Most ditransitive clauses have alternants with a single object and a PP complement with to or for as head...
(a.i) I sent Sue a copy. ~ (b.i) I sent a copy to Sue.
(a.ii) I ordered Sue a copy. ~ (b.ii) I ordered a copy for Sue....it is only the [a] examples that we analyse as ditransitive, as double-object constructions. In [b] the PP to/for Sue is not an indirect object, not an object at all, having none of the properties outlined in §4.1 above, and the NP Sue is of course an oblique, hence not a possible object of the verb.
To explain better the remark about "canonical" clauses: Huddleston & Pullum are saying that for the most part you don't speak of an "indirect object" unless the sentence has two non-subject arguments. That's because English is not very permissive about omitting arguments. If a verb sense requires certain arguments, they normally cannot be omitted entirely. But suppose you have a verb which is normally ditransitive, and it has a sense requiring only one argument, marked like an indirect object (a prepositional phrase)? In that case the sense would normally be classified as extended intransitive rather than ditransitive. (e.g., get in The cat got under the table). So you are kind of blocked from finding such examples.
Your sentence doesn't include an indirect object so it doesn't prove the rule wrong. Instead, you just have an adjunct that happens to use the preposition to which is probably why you've confused it for an indirect object.
That said, there is no such restriction. It's really not hard to find a verb and construct a sentence like the following:
- She readV.I. to meIO last night.
- They called outV.I. to the boyIO hoping to find him.
- I spokeV.I. to my friendsIO last night..
All are intransitive verbs (though they do have transitive usages too).
Other verbs (like copulas and copula-esque verbs) can readily take indirect objects, but won't have direct objects (instead they'll have predicative nominative/adjectives).