This is a difficult one, I’ve been racking my brains but I just come up with a sensible name for these variables. Someone will probably instantly hit on one.
Take these example actions:
- “throw bottle at wall”
- “push John into door”
- “attack Ogre with sword”
action thing at/with/on/in/to thing
I need a sensible name for the first “thing”, and a sensible name for the second “thing” if I had to define a variable for each. So… like “Interactor” and “Interactee”… but a proper name.
I’ve been trying to explain this to a few people and I can’t seem to get the concept across, so feel free to ask me to clarify.
The two “things” in your example seem to me the “direct object” and the “indirect object.”
See Grammar Monster‘s explanation.