Re: THEORY: transitivity

>
> Paul Hopper and Sandra Thompson wrote an excellent
> article in the early
> 80s (Language, Vol. 56, no. 2) entitled
> "Transitivity in Grammar
> and Discourse". Therein they list 10 (!) different
> criteria that
> languages use to encode transitivity, and they show
> that transitivity
> is really more of a cline than a discrete
> proposition.  The 10
> criteria are:
>
> (1)  Participants:  two or more vs. one
> (2)  Kinesis: action vs. nonaction
> (3)  Aspect: telic vs. atelic
> (4)  Punctuality: punctual vs. nonpunctual
> (5)  Volitionality: volitional vs. nonvolitional
> (6)  Affirmation:  affirmative vs. negative
> (7)  Mode: realis vs. irrealis
> (8)  Agency:  A high in potency vs. A low in potency
> (9)  Affectedness of O:  O totally affected vs. O
> not affected
> (10) Individuation of O: O highly individuated vs. O
> nonindividuated
>
> By most of these criteria, I would say German
> 'folgen' is high on
> the transitivity cline, despite the fact that it
> subcategorizes for
> a dative object. Another point is that sometimes
> verbs just lexically
> specify things, and their behavior does not reflect
> any actual synchronic
> generalizations about where the verb fits on the
> transitivity cline.
> So, if we've decided to lump things as transitive or
> intransitive,
> I would say 'folgen' is transitive.
Those criteria seem quite interesting. In fact, it
seems that the world once more collapsed under my
feet. I checked in my Dictionnary for Linguistics at
"transitif" and the result is that I have no more idea
of what is transitive and what is not. It is said that
traditionnal grammars distinguished between direct and
indirect transitivity ("indirect" meaning that there
must be some preposition before the complement), but
that's all old-fashioned (I summarize) and now we have
to think in terms of syntagms: "One could say that
every verb is a transitive verb in the context of a
complement nominal syntagm" (?) Then the transitive
verbs can also be used  intransitively (ex: Pierre
mange). Other grammaticians talk about attributive
intransitives (like: obéir, parler...).

Well, what I meant was simply: some verbs are followed
by a "complément d'objet direct" (clearly I should
have written: direct transitive) in some languages,
while the equivalent verbs are followed by a
"complément d'objet indirect" in other languages, with
or without a preposition, and the preposition used, if
any, may differ from one language to another (I mean,
there are usually not equivalent), and this is all
purely syntactic (AFAIU, the references you give seem
to imply that transitivity is something semantic that
can be encoded is various ways ? or rather, something
like a cloud of various concepts ?). So I shall no
more use the word "transitive" since I don't
understand any more what it means.

Yet in my Bescherelle (tutorial for French
conjugation), there is a list of all usual French
verbs, and each one is followed by one or more of the
abbreviations:
I = intransitive
T = direct transitive
Ti = indirect transitive
P = pronominal
This was printed in 2000, so it's not so old. And
transitivity is here clearly meant syntactically (it
helps you to use the verb the correct way). So what
should I think ? Ah, wait a minute. I have another
older edition of the same book (1981) and it doesn't
say the same. For ex, obéir (to obey) was intransitive
in 1981 and indirect transitive in 2000. Hence
probably  my initial confusion. But anyway, it's still
all about syntax. Oh my God, I don't know any more.

P.S. What is a cline ?

=====
Philippe Caquant


Barbarus hic ego sum, quia non intellegor illis (Ovidius).

Populus me sibilat, at mihi plaudo (Horatius).

Interdum stultus opportune loquitur (Henry Fielding).

Scire leges non hoc est verba earum tenere, sed vim ac potestatem (Somebody).

Melius est ut scandalum oriatur, quam ut veritas relinquatur (Somebody else).

Ceterum censeo *vi* esse oblitterandum (Me).


		
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