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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 ...
Many languages, such as Hungarian, mark transitivity through morphology; transitive verbs and intransitive verbs behave in distinctive ways. In languages with polypersonal agreement, an intransitive verb will agree with its subject only, while a transitive verb will agree with both subject and direct object.
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 ...
The transitive base approaches, also known as decausativization, propose that the intransitive form is derived from the transitive by deleting one argument that is the agent. Common base approaches suggest that both the transitive and the intransitive forms are formulated from a common base. [3]
Their distribution in a clause is partly indicated by traditional terms defining verbs as transitive or intransitive. Modern English reference grammars are in broad agreement as to a full inventory, but are not unanimous in their terminology or their classification. Clause elements may be identified by unique terms.
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 intransitive verb is associated with only one argument, a subject. The different kinds of arguments are usually represented as S, A, and O. S is the sole argument of an intransitive verb, A is the subject (or most agent-like) argument of a transitive verb, and O is the direct object (or most patient-like) argument of a
The distinction drawn here between ergative and object-deletion verbs is based on the role of the subject. The object of a transitive ergative verb is the subject of the corresponding intransitive ergative verb. With object-deletion verbs, in contrast, the subject is consistent regardless of whether an object is or is not present.