Re: THEORY: transitivity

Pasasgen/Mensa wrote:
> (And possibly also distinguish between verbs that
> don't have an agent, eg. "I sleep" and verbs that do.)
Isn't that the same as the intransitive/transitive distinction?  Unless
you're using "agent" in a different way than I am, an agent only exists
in transitive sentences.

> The question is if transitive verbs should be conjugated
> as intransitive if they don't have an object.
I'd say no.  You could, perhaps, use affixes for passive and
antipassive, tho.  In other words, take your example "I eat food".  The
passive form would be "food is eaten", the anti-passive, "I eat".
Perhaps those would be conjugated as intransitive verbs, but an affix
should be used to indicate what is missing.

> Do you have any comments?
Interesting idea.  In my Eastern, the old antipassive particle, _su_ has
evolved into a transitive marker _s(u)_ (/s(@)/), used whether or not
the object is present.  Eastern has evolved from ergative to
accusative.  That's the closest I have now, but an earlier conlang of
mine, Tqa-Cize^ (/tTa tSi'zE/) had particles to indicate transitive and
ditransitive, intransitive and stative (what you call zero-transitive)
were indicated by no such particle being present.

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