Theiling Online    Sitemap    Conlang Mailing List HQ   

Re: Question about transitivity/intransitivity

From:Andreas Johansson <andjo@...>
Date:Sunday, June 1, 2003, 8:28
Quoting Doug Dee <AmateurLinguist@...>:

> In a message dated 5/28/2003 3:17:02 PM Eastern Daylight Time, > christophe.grandsire@FREE.FR writes: > > > >But there > >are other languages for which transitive verbs *must* be used with an > >object, even when you don't want to specify it. In other words, in > those > >languages a sentence like *"I eat" is ungrammatical. You *have* to say > at > >least "I eat something". In those languages, the > transitive/intransitive > >distinction is much clearer than in English. > > > In my conlang Revonian, if you want to use a basically transitive verb > like > "eat" without an object (as in "no, thank you, I've already eaten") you > have to > attach the "unspecified object" suffix to the verb, making it > intransitive. > The theory here was that since word order is fairly free, the speaker > should > give the hearers an indication of whether or not they should be > expecting to > find an object for that verb later in the sentence.
In Altaii, where word-order is everything but free, you have to supply an suffix _-eiz-_ to make a transitive intransitive. Eg _ma izi nhaz_ "I eat cheese", vs _ma nhazeiza_ "I eat". There's also a corresponding passive that lets you drop the subject; _izi nhazola_ "cheese is eaten". Andreas