Transitive verb
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Transitivity and valency |
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Transitivity |
Intransitive verb Transitive verb Ditransitive verb |
Valence increasing |
Causative Applicative Benefactive Dative shift |
Valence decreasing |
Passive Antipassive Impersonal passive |
Reflexives and reciprocals |
Reciprocal (grammar) Reciprocal pronoun |
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A transitive verb is a verb that accepts one or more objects, for example, 'to enjoy' in Donald enjoys music. This contrasts with intransitive verbs, which do not have objects, for example, 'to arise' in Donald arose.
Transitivity is traditionally thought of as a global property of a clause, by which activity is transferred from an agent to a patient.[1]
Transitive verbs can be classified by the number of objects they require. Verbs that accept only two
Verbs that take three objects are tritransitive.
A
In contrast to transitive verbs, some verbs take zero objects. Verbs that do not require an object are called intransitive verbs. An example in modern English is the verb to arrive.
Verbs that can be used in an intransitive or transitive way are called ambitransitive verbs. In English, an example is the verb to eat; the sentences You eat (with an intransitive form) and You eat apples (a transitive form that has apples as the object) are both grammatical.
The concept of valency is related to transitivity. The valency of a verb considers all the arguments the verb takes, including both the subject and all of the objects. In contrast to valency, the transitivity of a verb only considers the objects. Subcategorization is roughly synonymous with valency, though they come from different theoretical traditions.
History
Transitive phrases, i.e. phrases containing transitive verbs, were first recognized by the
Lexical vis-à-vis grammatical information
Traditionally, transitivity patterns are thought of as lexical information of the verb, but recent research in construction grammar and related theories has argued that transitivity is a grammatical rather than a lexical property, since the same verb very often appears with different transitivity in different contexts.[citation needed] Consider:
- Does your dog bite? (no object)
- The cat bit him. (one object)
- Can you bite me off a piece of banana? (two objects)
- The vase broke. (no object; anticausativeconstruction)
- She broke the toothpick. (one object)
- Can you break me some toothpicks for my model castle? (two objects)
- Stop me before I buy again. (no object; antipassive construction)
- The man bought a ring. (one object)
- The man bought his wife a ring. (two objects)
In grammatical construction theories, transitivity is considered as an element of grammatical construction, rather than an inherent part of verbs.[12][13]
In English
The following sentences exemplify transitive verbs in English.
- We're going to need a bigger boat.
- You need to fill in this form.
- Hang on, I'll have it ready in a minute.
- The professor took off his spectacles.
Other languages
In some languages, morphological features separate verbs based on their
授業
Jugyō
が
ga
始まる。
hajimaru.
The class starts.
先生
Sensei
が
ga
授業
jugyō
を
o
始める。
hajimeru.
The teacher starts the class.
However, the definition of transitive verbs as those with one object is not universal, and is not used in grammars of many languages.
In Hungarian
Hungarian is sometimes misunderstood to have transitive and intransitive conjugation for all verbs, but there is really only one general conjugation. In present and future, there is a lesser used variant – a definite, or say emphatic conjugation form. It is used only when referring to a previous sentence, or topic, where the object was already mentioned. Logically the definite article a(z) as reference is used here—and due to verb emphasis (definite), word order changes to VO.
- If one does not want to be definite, once can simply say:
- házat látok — I see (a) house – (general)
- látom a házat — I see the house – (The house we were looking for)
- almát eszem — I eat (an) apple – (general)
- eszem az almát — I eat the apple – (The one mom told me to)
- bort iszom — I drink wine – (general)
- iszom a bort — I drink the wine – (That you offered me before)
In English one would say 'I do see the house', etc., stressing the verb – in Hungarian, the object is emphasized – but both mean exactly the same thing.
In Pingelapese
In the Pingelapese language, transitive verbs are used in one of four of their most common sentence structures. Transitive verbs according to this language have two main characteristics. These characteristics are action verbs and the sentence must contain a direct object. To elaborate, an action verb is a verb that has a physical action associated to its meaning. The sentence must contain a direct object meaning there must be a recipient of said verb. Two entities must be involved when using a transitive sentence. There is also a fixed word order associated with transitive sentences: subject-transitive verb-object.[14] For example:
Linda (Subject) e aesae (transitive verb) Adino (object) This sentence translates to, Linda knows Adino.[14]
In Polish
The definition of transitive verbs as those with one object is not used in grammars of many languages. For example, it is generally accepted in Polish grammar[15] [16] [17] [18] that transitive verbs are those that:
- Accept a genitivein the negative form)
OR - Undergo passive transformation
Both conditions are fulfilled in many instances of transitive verbs:
Maria widzi Jana (Mary sees John; Jana is the accusative form of Jan)
Jan jest widziany przez Marię (John is seen by Mary)
See also
References
- (PDF) from the original on 2007-06-27. Retrieved 24 January 2016.
- ISBN 978-3-11-017840-1.
We distinguish two types of transitive clauses: those including only [a subject–direct object] pair are monotransitive; clauses containing [subject, direct object, and indirect object] are ditransitive.
- ISBN 978-90-272-2983-0.
- S2CID 53133279.
- ISBN 978-90-272-8768-7.
- (PDF) from the original on 2018-07-20.
- JSTOR 3350622.
- ^ Esteban, Avelino Corral (2012). "A comparative analysis of three-place predicates in Lakhota within the RRG framework". Spanish Journal of Applied Linguistics. 25: 9–26.
- S2CID 147402733.
- ^ a b "linguaggio nell'Enciclopedia Treccani". www.treccani.it (in Italian). Retrieved 2020-09-29.
- ISBN 9780521143264.
- ^ "Transitive and intransitive verb". grammarerror.com. Retrieved 2023-11-09.
- ^ "TRANSITIVE | meaning in the Cambridge English Dictionary". dictionary.cambridge.org. Retrieved 2019-02-24.
- ^ )
- ISBN 83-04-04445-5.
- ISBN 978-83-01-15390-8.
- ISBN 83-214-0923-7.
- ^ Milewski, Tadeusz (1967). Językoznawstwo. Warszawa: Państwowe Wydawnictwo Naukowe.