Re: Settle a Bet

Question: is "eat" in "she is eating" transitive or intransitive?

Answer: the verb "to eat" is one of those annoying ones that can be
either. If it has a direct object at the moment, it's transitive for the
moment. If it doesn't, it isn't. That's my tuppence and thruppence and
ha'penny and farthing and sixpence and shilling and quarter-guinea on it,
to take a metaphor to Antarctica _and_ comment on the British monetary
system. (I think it was so designed for merchants to more easily
shortchange people.)

Well, actually, in that example, it's a participle. Noun forms, even of
verbs, don't have transitivity (transitiveness?), so it's not transitive
in another way.

Hmm, perhaps I can make the intransitive forms of transitive verbs by
making them reflexive. He speaks himself, he eats himself...that might
make for lots of confusion, especially to foreign speakers.