Test 3

In linguistics, transitivity is a property of verbs that relates to whether a verb can take 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 arguments.[1]
Traditional grammar[clarification needed] makes a binary distinction between intransitive verbs, which cannot
take a direct object (such as fall or sit in English), and transitive verbs, which take a direct object
(such as throw, injure, or kiss in English). In practice, many languages (including English) also have
verbs that have two objects (ditransitive verbs) or even verbs that can be used as both a transitive
verb and an intransitive verb (ambitransitive verbs, for example She walked the dog and She walked
with a dog).[2]
In functional grammar, transitivity is considered to be a continuum rather than a binary category as in
traditional grammar. The "continuum" view takes a more semantic approach. One way it does this is
by taking into account the degree to which an action affects its object (so that the verb see is
described as having "lower transitivity" than the verb kill).
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.[3][4] The discovery of the Stoics was later
used and developed by the philologists of the Alexandrian school and later grammarians.[3][5]

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.
In other languages the distinction is based on syntax. It is possible to identify an intransitive verb in
English, for example, by attempting to supply it with an appropriate direct object:

 He kissed her hand—transitive verb.

 She injured him—transitive verb.
 What did you throw?—transitive verb.
By contrast, an intransitive verb coupled with a direct object will result in
an ungrammatical utterance:

 What did you fall?

 I sat a chair.
Conversely (at least in a traditional analysis), using a transitive verb in English without a direct object
will result in an incomplete sentence:

 I kissed (...)
 You injured (...)
 Where is she now? *She's injuring.
English is unusually lax by comparison with other Indo-European languages in its rules on
transitivity; what may appear to be a transitive verb can be used as an intransitive verb, and vice
versa. Eat and read and many other verbs can be used either transitively or intransitively. 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.
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
considered integral to the action, for example She slept a troubled sleep.

Languages that express transitivity through morphology[edit]

The following languages of the below language families (or hypothetical language families) have this
feature:[6]
In the Uralo-Altaic language family:

 Mordvinic languages
 The three Ugric languages
 Northern Samoyedic languages
 Turkic languages
 Mongolic languages
 Korean
 Japanese
In Indo-European (Indo-Aryan) language familyː

 Hindi-Urdu (Hindustani)[7]
 Punjabi
 Gujarati[8][9]
In the Paleosiberian hypothetical language family:

 Languages of both branches of the Eskimo–Aleut family; for details from

the Eskimo branch, see e.g. Sireniki, Kalaallisut
 Chukotko-Kamchatkan languages
 Yukaghir
 The Ket language has a very sophisticated verbal inclination system, referring to the
object in many ways (see also polypersonal agreement).
All varieties of Melanesian Pidgin use -im or -em as a transitivity marker: laik means 'want',
while laikim means 'like (him/her/it)' in Tok Pisin.
All varieties of Salish.[10]