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| Grammatical features |
|---|
Syntax relationships |
| Transitivity and valency |
|---|
| Transitivity |
| Intransitive verb Transitive verb Ambitransitive verb |
| Valency |
| Impersonal (Avalent) Intransitive verb (Monovalent) Monotransitive (Divalent) Ditransitive verb (Trivalent) Tritransitive verb (Quadrivalent) |
| Valence increasing |
| Causative Applicative Benefactive Dative shift |
| Valence decreasing |
| Passive Antipassive Impersonal passive |
| Reflexives and reciprocals |
| Reflexive pronoun Reflexive verb Reciprocal construction Reciprocal pronoun |
 Linguistics portal |
Transitivity is alinguistics property that relates to whether averb,participle, orgerund denotes atransitive object. It is closely related tovalency, which considers otherarguments in addition to transitive objects.
English grammar makes a binary distinction betweenintransitive verbs (e.g.arrive,belong, ordie, which do not denote a transitive object) andtransitive verbs (e.g.,announce,bring, orcomplete, which must denote a transitive object). Many languages, including English, haveditransitive verbs that denote two objects, and some verbs may beambitransitive in a manner that is either transitive (e.g., "Iread the book" or "Wewon the game") or intransitive (e.g., "Iread until bedtime" or "Wewon") depending on the given context.
The notion of transitivity, as well as other notions that today are the basics of linguistics, was first introduced by theStoics and thePeripatetic school, but they probably referred to the whole sentence containing transitive or intransitive verbs, not just to the verb.[1][2] The discovery of the Stoics was later used and developed by the philologists of theAlexandrian school and latergrammarians.[1][3]
Many languages, such asHungarian, mark transitivity throughmorphology; transitive verbs and intransitive verbs behave in distinctive ways. In languages withpolypersonal agreement, an intransitive verb willagree with its subject only, while a transitive verb will agree with both subject and direct object.
In other languages the distinction is based onsyntax. It is possible to identify an intransitive verb in English, for example, by attempting to supply it with an appropriate direct object:
By contrast, an intransitive verb coupled with a direct object will result in anungrammatical utterance:
Conversely (at least in a traditional analysis), using a transitive verb in English without a direct object will result in an incomplete sentence:
English is unusually lax by comparison with otherIndo-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 andread and many other verbs can be used either transitively or intransitively. Often there is asemantic difference between the intransitive and transitive forms of a verb:the water is boiling versusI boiled the water;the grapes grew versusI grew the grapes. In these examples, known asergative verbs, the role of the subject differs between intransitive and transitive verbs.
Even though an intransitive verb may not take adirect object, it often may take an appropriateindirect object:
What are considered to be intransitive verbs can also takecognate objects, where the object is considered integral to the action, for exampleShe slept a troubled sleep.
The following languages of the belowlanguage families (or hypothetical language families) are examples of languages that have this feature:[4]
In theSino-Tibetan languages language family:
In theUralo-Altaic hypothetical language family:
In Indo-European (Indo-Aryan) language familyː
In thePaleosiberian hypothetical language family:
All varieties of Melanesian Pidgin use-im or-em as a transitivity marker:
Formal transitivity is associated with a variety of semantic functions across languages. Crosslinguistically, Hopper and Thompson (1980) have proposed to decompose the notion of transitivity into ten formal and semantic features (some binary, some scalar); the features argued to be associated with the degree of transitivity are summarized in the following well-known table:
| High | Low | |
|---|---|---|
| A. Participants | 2 or more participants, A and O. | 1 participant |
| B. Kinesis | action | non-action |
| C. Aspect | telic | atelic |
| D. Punctuality | punctual | non-punctual |
| E. Volitionality | volitional | non-volitional |
| F. Affirmation | affirmative | negative |
| G. Mode | realis | irrealis |
| H. Agency | A high in potency | A low in potency |
| I. Affectedness of O | O totally affected | O not affected |
| J. Individuation of O | O highly individuated | O non-individuated |
Næss (2007) has argued at length for the following two points:
Types of participants discussed include:
