Re: (In)transitive verbs

>--- "Mark J. Reed" <markjreed@...> wrote:
>
>>  The distinction itself is straightforward: if
>>  the verb takes an
>>  object, it's transitive; if not, it's
>>  intransitive.  English just
>>  doesn't *make* that distinction sharply; most
>>  verbs can be either.
>
>Specifically, English doesn't _mark_ the
>distinction. We make it, as you described above,
>just don't make a big deal out of it.
Well, we have a *handful* that make the distinction. The two that
readily come to mind are:

fall vs. fell

If a tree falls in the woods and no one is there to hear it.....
vs.
If I fell a tree in the woods.....

lie vs. lay

A book is lying on the table.
vs.
I'm laying the book on the table.

There must be some others. Not a whole bunch, but some.

Japanese has similar, more widespread (than Enlgish) distinctions:

hajimaru vs. hajimeru

miru vs. mieru

but also not across the board.

Someone mentioned that their lang had different conjugational endings
for to mark transitivity and intransitivity, which reminded me of the
way Hungarian marks definiteness and indefiniteness, which is not the
same as transitivity and intransitivity, I realize, but it reminded
me anyway. But *then* I recalled the Hungarian "ikes" verbs, which,
if I remember correctly, used to be a marking for a subclass of
intransitive verbs:

fázik - be cold
esik - fall
szökik - escape
álmodik - dream

That distinction is quite blurry in modern Hungarian, but hey, it *was* there.

Kou

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