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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 ...
In these examples, known as ergative verbs, the role of the subject differs between intransitive and transitive verbs. Even though an intransitive verb may not take a direct object, it often may take an appropriate indirect object: I laughed at him. What are considered to be intransitive verbs can also take cognate objects, where the object is ...
Intransitive and transitive verbs are the most common, but the impersonal and objective verbs are somewhat different from the norm. In the objective, the verb takes an object but no subject; the nonreferent subject in some uses may be marked in the verb by an incorporated dummy pronoun similar to that used with the English weather 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.
In example (a), the verb apurtu is unaccusative, and the noun edalontzi appears in the object position, and is marked in the absolutive case. In example (b), the verb is transitive, and we see the subject Jon marked in the ergative case. The auxiliary verb used in either case is also different.
In some other languages, in which subjects are not syntactically obligatory, there would be no subject at all: The Spanish translation of It's raining, for example, is a single verb form, Llueve.) An intransitive verb takes one argument, e.g. He 1 sleeps. A transitive verb takes two, e.g. He 1 kicked the ball 2. A ditransitive verb takes three ...
In linguistic typology, tripartite alignment is a type of morphosyntactic alignment in which the main argument ('subject') of an intransitive verb, the agent argument ('subject') of a transitive verb, and the patient argument ('direct object') of a transitive verb are each treated distinctly in the grammatical system of a language. [1]
Burzio's generalization recognizes two classes of intransitive verbs: With unaccusative intransitive verbs (e.g., fall), the single argument bears the theme theta role, and the subject is understood as the undergoer or receiver of the action. For example, in the sentence Emily fell, the subject Emily undergoes the action of falling.