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Re: Question about transitivity/intransitivity

From:Douglas Koller, Latin & French <latinfrench@...>
Date:Thursday, May 29, 2003, 19:58
>Christophe Grandsire scripsit: > >> Note that English and French are quite liberal in that respect. 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.
I'm not disputing your point, and I haven't done a statistical survey (leave that to the grad students), but I think English may be a tad more liberal than the French in this regard. Many prominal verbs are such because they require an object. "I'm shaving" is okay English, but "*je rase" in French is as jarring as saying "I'm wearing" in English, hence "je me rase"; "I'm hurrying" vs. "je _me_ dépêche", usw. I'm thinking of bazillions of counterexamples as I reread this, but I hope you get what I mean. Kou

Replies

Roger Mills <romilly@...>
Christophe Grandsire <christophe.grandsire@...>