Re: [Lingo] inTransitive

["Jim Breen" <jimbreen@example.com>]

On 12/06/07, Birkir A. Barkarson <birkirb@example.com> wrote:
> I have been meaning to pick up a book on this but does anyone know of a good
> way/pattern to identify transitive and intransitive verbs?
>
> Use cases:
>
> 1.
> I have a transitive verb, can I guess the intransitive form or having an
> intransitive verb can I guess the transitive form.
>
> 2.
> I have a verb, can I tell if it's
or intransitive?
> Is context necessary for this, or can I do with out it?
>
> Currently I find I have some difficulty with this, and often wonder if there is
> some way other than rote memorization to handle this.  What strategies, if any,
> do you employ?

I don't think there is a deterministic way of telling which is which,
although they are in families and it is possible sometimes to guess the
other one correctly.

A few years back I combined a few sources to make a big table of
transitive/intransitive verb pairs. A cleaned up version is in Ben
Bullock's FAQ. See: http://www.sljfaq.org/w/Transitive_and_intransitive_verbs

Jim
--
Jim Breen
Honorary Senior Research Fellow
Clayton School of Information Technology,
Monash University, VIC 3800, Australia
http://www.csse.monash.edu.au/~jwb/