Talk:Transitive verb

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Contents 1 Ergative vs. normal 2 Lack of neutrality in the article 3 Merge 4 Tritransitive?

[edit] Ergative vs. normal

"...ergative verbs refer to events that take place within or are directed towards the verb's subject - that is, the instrument of the verb is the subject. The verb "sees" in the second example is one such verb, as are "to think" and "to believe"..... The normal type of verb indicates that an action is exercised against the verb's subject; these verbs often require an object in order to be grammatical. "Lifted" above is one example of such a verb;

I'm not sure I get the distinction between ergative and normal verbs from the definitions above. Surely an indication that events "take place within or are directed towards the verb's subject" is the same as an indication that "action is exercised against the verb's subject"? - dan

Thanks for pointing this out. It should read "...against the verb's object". I fixed it. AxelBoldt 20:55, 21 November 2005 (UTC)

Actually, now that I thought about it, the whole paragraph about ergatives is wrong, see ergative verb for the correct version. AxelBoldt 21:12, 21 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Lack of neutrality in the article

The article only describes facts of English language and may lead one into error. The notion of transitivity has nothing to do with the number of objects in many grammars (other than English).

I have added some info on Polish then.

--Grzegorj 11:04, 22 January 2006 (UTC)

• This is English Wiki and should focus on English grammar, but foreign language examples are very helpful. The Polish example is an excellent addition, but somewhat overlong. I've reduced the exceptions part to just saying that exceptions exist. --155.188.183.5 12:40, 1 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Merge

It has been proposed, that article Transitivity (grammatical category) should be merged into here.

Sorry for my having created Transitivity (grammatical category), I have committed it before seeing that Transitive verb really covers the topic, thus a distinct Transitivity (grammatical category) article may seem superfluous.

I committed Transitivity (grammatical category) out of logical reasons: it seemed for me necessary to have a distinct article for the grammatical category itself, which stands (in a Platonic or logical or OOP sense) above its “instances” (transitive verb, intransitive verb).

I saw that almost each grammatical category does have its own artice: polarity, voice etc. Here, especially the “binary” categories are interesing for us (polarity and definiteness): even they have their own category, and are not merged into their “positive instance”. Really, in the case of transitivity, we cannot deal with any natural “positive instance”.

I thought that broader terms have to redirect (merge) to narrower ones (and not vice versa), on the example of middle voice: it is redirected to grammatical voice. In future, maybe a distinct middle voice article will become necessary (e.g. as more and more examples and materials are written). In fact, initating Transitivity (grammatical category) looked like a good idea for me while my enlarging the Sirenik language article.

Sorry again for having created Transitivity (grammatical category) maybe in an inconsiderate way. But is it sure that it will not be important in the future?

Maybe another reason for the distinct article: “Transitive verb” may suggest a property of a (specific) verb, but “Transitivity (grammatical category)” stressses that it can be a morphological feature in some languages, thus, property of the language itself. An analogous emphasis can be read in the lead text of the Polypersonal agreement article.

Physis 11:04, 16 January 2007 (UTC)

I disagree with the merge proposal. The grammatical category article is more technical and focused on comparative lingustics, whereas the verb article is more useful to laypeople and covers grammar. Evan Donovan 00:45, 28 August 2007 (UTC)

Removing tag 71.167.35.48 03:58, 22 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Tritransitive?

Hi, could someone get a source for tritransitivity? I have never heard of the name before, and the example given (I bought you a book for ten dollars) sounds fishy — the third "object", for three dollars, looks more like an adjunct; for that matter, so does the first one, you. Can we get a normative grammar which supports that interpretation? Wtrmute (talk) 03:24, 26 March 2008 (UTC)

I agree; the verb bought is ditransitive. As you mentioned, for ten dollars is not an argument at all, though you is an optional argument. I'm deleting only the example because the term "tritransitive" is used in some contexts. I think this is just a bad example. — Zerida ☥ 19:55, 27 March 2008 (UTC)