A transitive verb is a
verb
A verb is a word that generally conveys an action (''bring'', ''read'', ''walk'', ''run'', ''learn''), an occurrence (''happen'', ''become''), or a state of being (''be'', ''exist'', ''stand''). In the usual description of English, the basic f ...
that entails one or more
transitive objects, for example, 'enjoys' in ''Amadeus enjoys music''. This contrasts with
intransitive verb
In grammar, an intransitive verb is a verb, aside from an auxiliary verb, whose context does not entail a transitive object. That lack of an object distinguishes intransitive verbs from transitive verbs, which entail one or more objects. Add ...
s, which do not entail transitive objects, for example, 'arose' in ''Beatrice arose''.
Transitivity is traditionally thought of as a global property of a clause, by which activity is transferred from an
agent to a
patient
A patient is any recipient of health care services that are performed by Health professional, healthcare professionals. The patient is most often Disease, ill or Major trauma, injured and in need of therapy, treatment by a physician, nurse, op ...
.
Transitive verbs can be classified by the number of objects they require. Verbs that entail only two
arguments
An argument is a series of sentences, statements, or propositions some of which are called premises and one is the conclusion. The purpose of an argument is to give reasons for one's conclusion via justification, explanation, and/or persua ...
, a
subject and a single
direct object
In linguistics, an object is any of several types of arguments. In subject-prominent, nominative-accusative languages such as English, a transitive verb typically distinguishes between its subject and any of its objects, which can include but ...
, are monotransitive. Verbs that entail two objects, a direct object and an indirect object, are ''
ditransitive'', or less commonly ''bitransitive''. An example of a ditransitive verb in English is the verb ''to give'', which may feature a subject, an indirect object, and a direct object: ''John gave Mary the book''.
Verbs that take three objects are ''tritransitive''. In English a tritransitive verb features an indirect object, a direct object, and a
prepositional phrase
An adpositional phrase is a syntactic category that includes ''prepositional phrases'', ''postpositional phrases'', and ''circumpositional phrases''. Adpositional phrases contain an adposition (preposition, postposition, or circumposition) as he ...
– as in ''I'll trade you this bicycle for your binoculars'' – or else a
clause
In language, a clause is a Constituent (linguistics), constituent or Phrase (grammar), phrase that comprises a semantic predicand (expressed or not) and a semantic Predicate (grammar), predicate. A typical clause consists of a subject (grammar), ...
that behaves like an argument – as in ''I bet you a pound that he has forgotten''. Not all
descriptive grammars recognize tritransitive verbs.
A
clause
In language, a clause is a Constituent (linguistics), constituent or Phrase (grammar), phrase that comprises a semantic predicand (expressed or not) and a semantic Predicate (grammar), predicate. A typical clause consists of a subject (grammar), ...
with a prepositional phrase that expresses a meaning similar to that usually expressed by an object may be called ''pseudo-transitive''. For example, the
Indonesian sentences ''Dia masuk sekolah'' ("He attended school") and ''Dia masuk ke sekolah'' ("He went into the school") have the same verb (''masuk'' "enter"), but the first sentence has a direct object while the second has a prepositional phrase in its place. A clause with a direct object plus a prepositional phrase may be called ''pseudo-ditransitive'', as in the
Lakhota sentence ''Haŋpíkčeka kiŋ lená wé-čage'' ("I made those moccasins for him"). Such constructions are sometimes called ''complex transitive''. The category of complex transitives includes not only prepositional phrases but also
dependent clause
A dependent clause, also known as a subordinate clause, subclause or embedded clause, is a certain type of clause that juxtaposes an independent clause within a complex sentence. For instance, in the sentence "I know Bette is a dolphin", the claus ...
s,
appositives, and other structures. There is some controversy regarding complex transitives and tritransitives; linguists disagree on the nature of the structures.
In contrast to transitive verbs, some verbs take zero objects. Verbs that do not require an object are called
intransitive verb
In grammar, an intransitive verb is a verb, aside from an auxiliary verb, whose context does not entail a transitive object. That lack of an object distinguishes intransitive verbs from transitive verbs, which entail one or more objects. Add ...
s. An example in modern English is the verb ''to arrive''.
Verbs that can be used in an intransitive or transitive way are called ''
ambitransitive verb An ambitransitive verb is a verb that is both intransitive and transitive.Dixon, R.M.W. & Aikhenvald, Alexendra Y. Changing Valency: Case Studies in Transitivity. Cambridge University Press. This verb may or may not require a direct object. Engli ...
s''. 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
In linguistics, subcategorization denotes the ability/necessity for lexical items (usually verbs) to require/allow the presence and types of the syntactic arguments with which they co-occur. For example, the word "walk" as in "X walks home" requ ...
is roughly
synonym
A synonym is a word, morpheme, or phrase that means precisely or nearly the same as another word, morpheme, or phrase in a given language. For example, in the English language, the words ''begin'', ''start'', ''commence'', and ''initiate'' are a ...
ous with valency, though they come from different theoretical traditions.
History
Transitive phrases, i.e. phrases containing transitive verbs, were first recognized by the
stoics
Stoicism is a school of Hellenistic philosophy that flourished in ancient Greece and Rome. The Stoics believed that the universe operated according to reason, ''i.e.'' by a God which is immersed in nature itself. Of all the schools of ancient ...
and from the
Peripatetic school
The Peripatetic school ( ) was a philosophical school founded in 335 BC by Aristotle in the Lyceum in ancient Athens. It was an informal institution whose members conducted philosophical and scientific inquiries. The school fell into decline afte ...
, but they probably referred to the whole phrase containing the transitive verb, not just to the verb.
The advancements of the stoics were later developed by the philologists of the
Alexandrian school.
[
]
Lexical vis-à-vis grammatical information
Traditionally, transitivity patterns are thought of as lexical information of the verb, but recent research in construction grammar
Construction grammar (often abbreviated CxG) is a family of theories within the field of cognitive linguistics which posit that constructions, or learned pairings of linguistic patterns with meanings, are the fundamental building blocks of human ...
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. 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; anticausative construction)
*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
The antipassive voice (abbreviated or ) is a type of grammatical voice that either does not include the object or includes the object in an oblique case. This construction is similar to the passive voice, in that it decreases the verb's valency ...
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
In linguistics, a grammatical construction is any syntax, syntactic string of words ranging from Sentence (linguistics), sentences over phrase structure rules, phrasal structures to certain complex lexemes, such as phrasal verbs.
Grammatical const ...
, rather than an inherent part of verbs.
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 transitivity, which suggests this is a salient linguistic
Linguistics is the scientific study of language. The areas of linguistic analysis are syntax (rules governing the structure of sentences), semantics (meaning), Morphology (linguistics), morphology (structure of words), phonetics (speech sounds ...
feature. For example, in Japanese:
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 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:
: — I see (a) house – (general)
: — I see the house – (The house we were looking for)
: — I eat (an) apple – (general)
: — I eat the apple – (The one mom told me to)
: — I drink wine – (general)
: — 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. For example:
Linda (Subject) ''e'' aesae (transitive verb) Adino (object) This sentence translates to, Linda knows Adino.
In Polish
It is generally accepted in Polish grammar
The grammar of the Polish language is complex and characterized by a high degree of inflection, and has relatively free word order, although the dominant arrangement is subject–verb–object (SVO). There commonly are no articles (although this ...
that transitive verbs are those that:
* Entail a direct object
In linguistics, an object is any of several types of arguments. In subject-prominent, nominative-accusative languages such as English, a transitive verb typically distinguishes between its subject and any of its objects, which can include but ...
(which is in the accusative
In grammar, the accusative case (abbreviated ) of a noun is the grammatical case used to receive the direct object of a transitive verb.
In the English language, the only words that occur in the accusative case are pronouns: "me", "him", "her", " ...
, or, for a few verbs, instrumental
An instrumental or instrumental song is music without any vocals, although it might include some inarticulate vocals, such as shouted backup vocals in a big band setting. Through Semantic change, semantic widening, a broader sense of the word s ...
case in non-negated sentences, and in the genitive
In grammar, the genitive case ( abbreviated ) is the grammatical case that marks a word, usually a noun, as modifying another word, also usually a noun—thus indicating an attributive relationship of one noun to the other noun. A genitive can ...
case in negated sentences)
OR
* Can undergo passive transformation
For example, the verb (to see) is transitive because it satisfies both conditions:
(Mary sees John; is the accusative form of )
(John is seen by Mary)
See also
* Morphosyntactic alignment
In linguistics, morphosyntactic alignment is the grammatical relationship between arguments—specifically, between the two arguments (in English, subject and object) of transitive verbs like ''the dog chased the cat'', and the single argument of ...
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Transitive Verb
Transitivity and valency