Transitivity

1. Transitivity By: Lynda ELNAFFAR Supervised by: prof. Walid Amer

2. The outlines: What is transitivity ? The History of transitivity Transitivity of verbs Types of verbs in terms of transitivity Direct and indirect objects Predictive compliments Phrasal verbs and transitivity Transitive and intransitive verbs in English Transitive and intransitive verbs in Arabic Similarities between English and Arabic transitivity Differences between English and Arabic transitivity Conclusion

4. Answer the following questions: What is transitivity ? What do mean by Transitivity of verbs? What are the Types of verbs in terms of transitivity? What is Direct and indirect objects ? What is Predictive compliments? • ?

5. Comment! • Shall we go, you and I, while we can? Through... the transitive nightfall of diamonds. Robert Hunter "Dark Star" (Live/Dead (1969) What transitive means here ?

6. What is transitivity ? • In linguistics, transitivity is a property of verbs that relates to whether a verb can take direct objects and how many such objects a verb can take. It is closely related to valency, which considers other verb arguments in addition to direct objects. The obligatory noun phrases and prepositional phrases determine how many arguments a predicate has. Obligatory elements are considered arguments while optional ones are never counted in the list of argument.

7. In the broadest sense, transitivity is a method of classifying verbs and clauses with reference to the relationship of the verb to other structural elements. Put simply, a transitive construction is one in which the verb is followed by a direct object; an intransitive construction is one in which the verb cannot take a direct object. In recent years, the concept of transitivity has received special attention from researchers in the field of Systemic Linguistics. In "Notes on Transitivity and Theme in English," M.A.K. Halliday described transitivity as "the set of options relating to cognitive content, the linguistic representation of extralinguistic experience, whether of phenomena of the external world or of feelings, thoughts, and perceptions"(Journal of Linguistics, 1967)

8. History • The notion of transitivity, as well as other notions that today are the basics of linguistics, was first introduced by the Stoics and the Peripatetic school, but they probably referred to the whole sentence containing transitive or intransitive verbs, not just to the verb. • The discovery of the Stoics was later used and developed by the philologists of the Alexandrian school and later grammarians.

16. An intransitive verb has two characteristics. First, it is an action verb, expressing a doable activity like arrive, go, lie, sneeze, sit, die, etc. Second, unlike a transitive verb, it will not have a direct object receiving the action.

20. Transitive verbs are not just verbs that can take an object; they demand objects. Without an object to affect, the sentence that a transitive verb inhabits will not seem complete. E.g : Please bring coffee. In this sentence, the verb bring is transitive; its object is coffee, the thing that is being brought. Without an object of some kind, this verb cannot function. E.g: Please bring.

25. A ditransitive verb is a verb which takes a subject and two objects which refer to a theme and a recipient. According to certain linguistics considerations, these objects may be called direct and indirect, or primary and secondary. This is in contrast to monotransitive verbs, which take only one object, a direct or primary object.

28. A complex transitive is a verb that requires both a direct object and another object or an object complement. • In a complex-transitive construction, the object complement identifies a quality or attribute pertaining to the direct object. • Complex-transitive verbs in English include believe, consider, declare, elect, find, judge, keep, know, label, make, name, presume, pronounce, prove, rate, regard, and think. Note that verbs often belong to more than one category. For example, made can function as a complex transitive (as in "Her thoughtless remarks made him unhappy") and also as an ordinary transitive verb ("She made a promise")

36. English and Arabic are two major languages which have many differences and similarities in grammar. One of the issues which is of great importance in the two languages is transitivity and intransitivity. English and Arabic are similar in having transitive and intransitive verbs, and in having verbs which can go transitive or intransitive according to context. By contrast Arabic is different from English in its ability to change intransitive verbs into transitive ones by applying inflections on the main verb. Additionally, Arabic is different from English in the fact that some Arabic transitive verbs can take up to three objects.

37. Intransitive and Transitive Verbs in English Before proceeding further with transitive and intransitive verbs in English, let’s first shed light on the sentence and clause concepts in English. As stated by grammarians, sentence can consist of one or more clauses. By turn, clauses are made up of certain elements. These elements can include subject, verb, object, complement and adverbial. Hence, a verb is one of the essential and main components of a sentence or a clause. Verbs are broadly divided into transitive and intransitive verbs (this is one of the classification only). Intransitive verbs are those verbs which do not require an object, they can stand by themselves. Intransitive verbs include verbs such as think in a sentence like “I am thinking”. On the other hand transitive verbs are those verbs which require an object to make the meaning complete. For example, I bought a car

38. Intransitive verbs in English As it has been mentioned earlier, intransitive verbs do not take an object, though they can be followed by a prepositional phrase. They usually express actions (ie. He is running along the road), or events (i.e. It is raining ouside). The following are examples: 1. Ahmad was waiting in the garden. 2. Ali studies hard. In the above examples, the verb “wait” is followed by a prepositional phrase, and not an object. Likewise, in the second example, the verb “study” is followed by an adjective. Hence, intransitive verbs can be described as having the following pattern: NP+ V+ (Prep P) (Adj). Brackets show optionality because a transitive verb is mainly NP+V. As a matter of fact, intransitive verbs cannot be in the passive form because they do not have objects. However, those intransitive verbs can sometimes be transitive depending on the meaning of the sentence or clause. For example, the verbs in the above examples can also be transitive.

39. Consider the following examples: 1. Ahmad is waiting his dad. 2. Ali studies applied linguistics. In these last two examples, the verbs are followed by objects. In contrast, there are verbs which are always intransitive; they are mostly followed by prepositions. The following verbs are examples of verbs which are always intransitive: apply, apologize, rain, be, feel, seem, and snore.

40. Transitive Verbs in English Transitive verbs are used to express actions (play), feelings (love), perception (saw) and possession (have). Although they are followed by objects, sometimes we can leave out the object when it would add little or nothing to the meaning. For example, Ahmad is reading . The object in this sentence can be left out because the meaning is embedded in the verb. Moreover, the object can be left out after the following verbs: ask/answer (a question), draw/paint (a picture), enter/leave (a room/building), pass/fail (a test/exam), play/win/lose (a game), practice (a skill), sing (a song), speak (a few words), study (a subject). Furthermore, the object can be left after the following verbs if the meaning is clear. begin, choose, decide, hear, help, know, notice, see, start. Some verbs, in English, can be transitive in certain contexts and intransitive in other contexts.

41. Phrasal Verbs and Transitivity Phrasal verbs can also be classified as transitive or intransitive. Cindy has decided to give up sweets while she diets. I hope Cindy doesn’t give up. Give up is just one of many phrasal verbs that can be transitive or intransitive. Whether give up has an object or not will alter the meaning it conveys. The first sense of give up means “to forgot something,” whereas the second sense means “to stop trying.” If we refuse to learn about transitivity, the Grammar Police will blow up our building. When the Grammar Police confronted her about her verbs, she blew up.

44. Transitive and intransitive verbs in Arabic :

46. Table 2:

49. In the above examples, both transitive and intransitive verbs can change to be the opposite if we made an inflection to the verb. For example, adding hamza “ا” in front of the intransitive verb changes it into transitive one. So we can say, اجلس احمد عليا, and which means Ahmad made Ali sit down (this will be discussed later in details).