"He ordered the players to wait."
Translation:Li ordonis al la ludantoj atendi.
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Your sentence does not tell who received the order. It could mean "li ordonis al la trejnisto ke la ludantoj atendu".
No, of course. I put ludisto by mistake, agreed it was wrong, then thought to myself, wait... then what IS a ludisto? I mix up those two endings a lot, and I'm trying to drill the difference into my brain. Thanks for the response!
First of all, ordoni is transitive verb, i.e. it can have a direct object. So you ask for an accusative: Kion li ordonis? This position is taken by an infinitive (atendi). Thus the receiver of the order has to be the indirect object. In Esperanto this is realised with the preposition al, other languages may use the dative case here.
The preposition al can be used with nearly every verb where it does make sense that the action is directed to someone or to something.
So why is "Li ordonis la ludantojn atendi" accepted if atendi is the direct object? Presumably this means that a verb can take more than one direct object. Is that correct?
More useful than "what Duolingo 'also' accepts" is, what are the example phrases in PIV. That's not always the end of the discussion, but in this case, it's a good next step.
- la kuracisto ordonis al mi ripozon,
- ordonis min al la lito;
- li ordonis al la malpura spirito eliri;
- ordonu al li, ke li ne babilu;
So the person receiving the order is often, but not always, marked by al.
I can't remember seeing that structure in any other case than when the accusative is on the object of the infinitive. If I see Li ordonis la ludantojn atendi, I understand "He ordered to wait the players".
