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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 ...
An ambitransitive verb is a verb that is both intransitive and transitive. [1]: 4 This verb may or may not require a direct object.English has many ambitransitive verbs. . Examples include read, break, and understand (e.g., "I read the book", saying what was read, or just "I read all afternoo
Often there is a semantic difference between the intransitive and transitive forms of a verb: the water is boiling versus I boiled the water; the grapes grew versus I grew the grapes. In these examples, known as ergative verbs , the role of the subject differs between intransitive and transitive verbs.
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. Additionally, intransitive verbs are typically considered within a class apart from modal verbs and ...
S refers to the subject of an intransitive verb, A refers to the agent of a transitive verb, and P refers to the patient of a transitive verb. (The patient is sometimes also called undergoer or theme.) These are core arguments of a verb: Lydia (S) is sleeping. Don (A) is cooking dinner (P).
That is, in the past tense (or perhaps perfective aspect), the agent and object of a transitive verb are marked with the same case ending, while the subject of an intransitive verb is not marked. In the present tense, the object of the transitive verb is marked, the other two roles are not – that is, a typical nominative–accusative ...
However, they are ergative–absolutive languages, and the more specific word order is intransitive VS, transitive VOA (Verb-Object-Absolutive), where the S and O arguments both trigger the same type of agreement on the verb. Indeed, many languages that some thought had a VOS (Verb-Object-Subject) word order turn out to be ergative like Mayan.
There are also some intransitive verbs, such as ’break’ and ’open’ which do not typically take animate themes, and the theme is not considered an actor or agent. It is possible that these intransitive verbs are not distinguished from transitive verbs on the basis of theme animacy, and their theme referents typically will be inanimate.