Step 1: Understanding the Question:
The question asks us to analyze the given sentence and isolate the grammatical object. In basic sentence structure (Subject + Verb + Object), the subject is the entity performing the action, the verb represents the action itself, and the object is the entity that undergoes or receives the action.
Step 2: Key Formula or Approach:
Analyze the parts of speech in the sentence:
- Subject: “The children” (the agents performing the action)
- Verb: “played” (the physical activity being done)
- Prepositional Phrase Object: “with a football” (where the direct recipient of the transitive activity or the tool of play is the noun “football”).
Step 3: Detailed Explanation:
When asking “What did the children play with?”, the answer points directly to “a football”. Here, the noun “football” acts as the object of the preposition “with”, receiving the action of the verb “played”. Thus, it is classified as the grammatical object in this syntactic structure. Options (A) represents the subject, (B) represents the finite verb, and (C) is a preposition.
Step 4: Final Answer:
The object of the sentence is “a football”, which corresponds to option (D).