----- Original Message -----
From: "Jim Grossmann" <steven@...>
To: <CONLANG@...>
Sent: Sunday, February 24, 2002 8:22 PM
Subject: Settle a Bet
> Help!
>
> I need to know if "eat" as in "She's eating." is transitive or
intransitive.
>
> According to the SIL glossary, an intransitive verb is one that cannot
take
> a direct object, like "come" "faint," etc.
>
> But according to The American Heritage Book of English Usage, an
> intransitive verb is simply one that doesn't happen to take an object,
which
> would make "eat" intransitive in the sentence "She's eating."
>
> I know that languages vary when it comes to marking verbs as intransitive
> and transitive; that all verbs in some languages have both transitive
and
> intransitive meanings, and that in other languages, semantically related
> verbs are morphologically marked to differentiate transitive &
intransitive
> verbs. So maybe the answer to my question varies cross-linguistically.
>
> But what's the situation for English? Is "eat" as in "She's eating."
> transitive or intransitive?
>
> Jim G.
>
hmm...'eating' appears to be the present participle, the verb is 'is'. So
the answer is: neither. On the other hand, the verb 'is' is more tricky to
say or not.