Transitivity (grammar)

Transitivity (from the Latin trānsitiō , to go over, transition) is a grammatical property that can be ascribed to a verb or a construction or sentence as a whole . Transitivity occurs when both a subject and a (direct) object are present in the sentence or are required by the verb. As intransitive constructions and verbs are called, have no (direct) object. If there are two objects, the construction or the verb is called ditransitive .

Definition of terms

A discrepancy in the description of transitivity in grammar also arises from different doctrinal opinions. Here, above all, the school grammar point of view and that of general linguistics confront each other.

Transitivity in school grammar

In traditional school grammar, transitivity is defined by the ability of a verb to rule the accusative case. A verb is therefore transitive (also called "aiming" verb ) if one of its players has the accusative case .

Another criterion in the school grammar view is the passivability. A verb is therefore transitive if it can be placed in a process passive in which the (accusative) object becomes the subject.

Example: He transferred the money - He transferred the money.

Transitivity in Linguistics

In general linguistics, however, the transitivity of a verb is less clearly defined. While in the school grammar perspective the accusative serves as a criterion for determining transitivity, the occurrence of an accusative in the linguistic perspective is, conversely, viewed as a consequence of the transitive property of a construction. In linguistics, the cases are first defined through the property of transitivity. This ensures that a property of transitivity can also be defined for languages that do not have an accusative (such as ergative languages ).

Transitive verbs and transitive sentences

Transitivity is often presented as a property used to classify verbs. Helmut Glück (2005) defines the term transitive as a syntactically based class of verbs whose characteristic property is to have an obligatory or optional object. The mention of "optional" objects in this definition addresses the problem that verbs can actually often occur in a transitive or an intransitive construction, often associated with slight differences in meaning:

The dog bit the postman .
Beware, the dog bites!

The second example sentence has a generalizing meaning, the first describes a single situation. The term “transitive verb” also requires that conditions or variants are specified in which an object can be omitted, i.e. in which a “transitive” verb occurs in an intransitive construction. Generalization or emphasis on the nature of an event are examples of factors that favor the omission of the object in verbs that are transitive in themselves.

The term of the transitive construction is also used independently because an accusative object can appear in an intransitive verb; this can happen, for example, if the verb still has a resultant adjective with it:

He ate the plate empty.

In this construction there is the intransitive variant of the verb to eat , because the plate is not the object that is eaten. However, the addition of the adjective empty brings in another argument that is realized in the accusative.

Furthermore, transitive and intransitive constructions (apparently) of a verb can coexist if the causative form ("cause that ...") of an "initially" intransitive verb (phonetic) coincides with this (which is partly attributed to the phonetic development of the language):

The child breaks the plate. (transitive, causes :) The plate breaks . (intransitive)
The mother is boiling the milk. (transitive, causes :) The milk is boiling . (intransitive)
The sun rays melt the snowmen. (transitive, causes :) The snowmen are melting . (intransitive)

While a "fundamental" transitive verb (facultative object) appears to be used intransitively above , however, the historical phonetic development of the causative form in the case of " melt " suggests that different verbs are left and right with different meanings (transitive and intransitive " Variant "), which (" by chance ") have homophony / homography , as with" ball ", which can be a play device or a dance event. One verb is typically transitive, the other typically intransitive. An analogous example without homophony is

The mother puts the child in the child seat. (transitive, causes :) The child is sitting in the child seat. (intransitive)

Verbal arguments

In order to determine the transitivity of a verb, it is first necessary to clarify the concept of the verbal argument . There are various criteria for this, which, depending on the analysis, can be weighted differently.

Case rectification

An important criterion in determining verbal arguments is the case reaction . In particular, it is about the question of which sentence element gets which case from where. When determining transitivity, the relevant sentence elements are the noun phrases (NP) or, in some modern theories, the determiner phrases (DP) (hereinafter NP is used). The decisive factor here is that the NPs are assigned their case of the verb or a functional sentence category.

Depending on the theoretical approach, the cases of verbal arguments come from the verb itself (more descriptive approaches) or from abstract syntactic categories ( generative approaches) such as I / T or v. The cases of other NPs are assigned by other categories, for example by other nouns , or by adpositions . To make this clear, the following examples from German are given:

the window pane , me and the child are each NP, see is a verb, with and through are prepositions .

A simple sentence would be

(1)	I	see	the child.
	I. nominative	verb	Child.Accusative

I stand in the nominative, the child stands in the accusative, in this example I am the subject, the child the object. The cases of both NPs are fixed, so they cannot be changed:

(2)	a.	*	Me	see	the child
			i. dative	verb	Child.Accusative
	b.	*	I	see	the child
			I. nominative	verb	Kind.Dativ

This immutability is a sign that the cases of the NP are firmly connected with the verb or with the position of the NP in the sentence. Note: The asterisk (*) in front of a sentence means that the sentence is ungrammatic .

If you add another NP ( the window pane ) to the sentence, the sentence becomes ungrammatic at first:

(3)	*	I	see	the child	the window glass
		I. nominative	verb	Child.Accusative	Window pane, battery / nom

In order for the sentence with the addition to be grammatical, it is necessary to add a preposition to the NP the window pane . This gives it a case, which in turn is unchangeable:

(4)	a.		I	see	the child	With	the window pane
			I. nominative	verb	Child.Accusative	Prep	Window pane.Dative
	b.	*	I	see	the child	With	the window glass
			I. nominative	verb	Child.Accusative	Prep	Window pane, accumulative

In the first example, the sentence is grammatical. The preposition with gives the NP the window pane the case dative , which is correctly implemented in the NP. In the second example, the NP has the accusative case , which in turn makes the sentence ungrammatic. Replacing the preposition with by the preposition by , the case changed the NP the window :

(5)	a.	*	I	see	the child	by	the window pane
			I. nominative	verb	Child.Accusative	Prep	Window pane.Dative
	b.		I	see	the child	by	the window glass
			I. nominative	verb	Child.Accusative	Prep	Window pane, accumulative

This example shows that the case of the NP the window pane is not tied to the position in the sentence, as is the case with the NP I and the child , but to the preposition in front of it. For the question of transitivity, only the NPs are of importance and thus verbal arguments that are assigned their case by the verb or by their position in the sentence. In the example above, me and the child would be verbal arguments, but the window pane would not.

Although this is the case in most nominative languages, the object does not necessarily have to be in the accusative. If you replace the verb see in the example with the verbs remember or help , the case of the object changes to genitive or dative :

(6)	a.		I	remember	of the child
			I. nominative	verb	Child. Genitive
	b.		I	help	the child.
			I. nominative	verb	Child. dative
		*	I	help	the child.
			I. nominative	verb	Child. accusative

The theorem in (6b) shows that the case of the object cannot be changed. So it is tied to the structure or to the verb.

Case correction alone is not sufficient to clearly determine the status of a sentence element as a verbal argument. First of all, there are many languages that do not mark a case on the NP itself (such as English), there are also verbs that, due to their meaning, do not embed an NP, but rather, for example, entire (subsidiary) sentences or prepositional phrases that are still labeled as verbal arguments apply. Case correction is therefore not a one-to-one means of determining verbal arguments, but rather an implicit one: If a NP has a fixed case determined by the verb, it is a verbal argument, but not necessarily the other way around ( injectivity ).

Grammaticality and Deletion

Another means of determining the status of a clause as a verbal argument is to check whether the grammaticality and fundamental meaning of the sentence changes if one of the clauses is omitted. If the part of the sentence can be omitted without the sentence becoming ungrammatic or implying a completely new meaning, the omitted is not a verbal argument.

Here are some examples from German for illustration: I , the man and the book are NP, giving, reading and thinking are verbs.

(7)	I give the book to the man

is a completely grammatical sentence of German. If one of the NPs is omitted, the sentence becomes ungrammatic:

(8th)	a.	*	Give	the	man	the	book	(this sentence is a theoretical imperative)
	b.	*	I	give	the	book
	c.	*	I	give	the	man

In addition to the subject NP in its meaning, in which a state of affairs is held to be true, a verb like think requires a sentence as a player:

(9)	I think the man is reading the book.

If you leave out the subordinate clause or use a simple NP, the meaning of the verb changes fundamentally (indicated in example sentences by the hash sign, #) or the sentence becomes ungrammatic:

(10)	a.	#	I think
	b.	*	I think the man

In the first sentence, the verb think is interpreted completely differently than in the sentence above, without additional contextual information. By omitting the embedded sentence, its meaning changed fundamentally.

In the following example, one sentence is also embedded in another:

(11)	I give the man the book that I read.

If you leave out the subordinate clause, the intended meaning of the verb itself does not change:

(12)	I give the book to the man

It is similar with adverbial additions:

(13)	a.	I read the book yesterday
	b.	I have the book on the chair read
	c.	I have read the book

A clause or sentence is only a verbal argument if, by omitting it, the entire sentence becomes ungrammatic or the meaning of the verb changes fundamentally. The problem here is what “fundamental” means. There is no final agreement on this. It is unclear whether the meaning of a verb like to eat changes fundamentally when one says what is eaten or not. It is similar with all verbs that can be used with or without an object:

(14)	a.		The man reads the book
	b.	#	The man is reading

If the main focus of the first sentence is that the man reads the book and not a newspaper, the second sentence only focuses on the fact that the man reads at all. From a syntactic and semantic point of view, one usually assumes that the first reading is a different word than reading the second sentence.

The deletion of arguments is not to be confused with the ellipse . In theory, it is assumed that in the case of an ellipse, the omitted information is indirectly available and syntactically integrated in the sentence, but is only not pronounced. For example, the sentence b. In dialogue (15), syntactically speaking, the sentence is not the same as that in (10b), even if it contains the same chain of sounds:

(15)	a.	Who do you think is reading the book?
	b.	I think; the man.	(or: ... is the one who reads the book)

Thematic roles

A criterion that is mainly used in functional theories when defining verbal arguments is the assignment of semantic (or thematic) roles as well as theta or zur roles (for differentiation see the linked article).

Argument coding on the verb

By no means all languages realize all the arguments of the verb in their own words or phrases. It is also not uncommon for languages to have no case markings whatsoever. Some of these languages compensate for this fact by marking the participants in the verb in the form of clitics or inflectional affixes on the verb itself.

So-called pro-drop languages have the property of realizing pronominal subjects not in the form of independent pronouns, but through clitics or affixes attached to the verb. An example of such a language is Italian :

(15)	t	-i	at the	-O
	you	-Accusative	love	-I. nominative
	I love you.

In addition to the subject, other languages also mark the object on the verb itself, provided the verb requires one. An example of this is the Algic language Yurok

(16)	ko'moy	-oc	-ek '
	see	-you.accusative	-I. nominative
	I see you.

In addition to the subject and indirect object, a small group of languages also marks the direct object on the ditransitive verb, such as the Lakota language :

(17)	ni	-wícha	-wa	-kʔu
	2. Singular dative	-3.Plural.Accusative	-1.Singular.Nominative	-give
	I give it to you.

If the verb of an active sentence in such a language has only one congruence mark, it is an intransitive verb, two markers a transitive verb, three markers a ditransitive verb. It should be noted, however, that these markers are also optional Arguments could act, which then usually appear in a different form than the markers that encode mandatory arguments. Also, on the surface, mandatory arguments in such languages can be unmarked. In such cases there is no affix for the corresponding argument in the verb, but this argument must be present logically according to the context. In such cases one assumes the existence of a so-called null morpheme , the argument is accordingly marked by the lack of a marker of its own. Such null morphemes usually appear in canonical positions in the world's languages. Objects in a sentence usually have the property of being inanimate, since objects are normally the things with which something is done. Because of this, it is more likely that the object is in the third person. Conversely, it is unusual for the object to be in the first or second person, since here an animate thing is degraded to a passive part of an action. One then says that an object in the third person is canonical while an object in the first or second person is uncanonical. For reasons of linguistic economy, such canonical constellations are usually not marked explicitly. Non-canonical constructions, on the other hand, tend to be marked more strongly; the inverse morphology is an example of such explicit markings .

Determining the transitivity of a verb

Based on the above criteria, the value of a verb can be determined with some degree of certainty, although clear judgments can rarely be made due to the different problems and vagueness of these properties, especially in less well-documented languages. The following terms can be defined from this:

If a verb does not require a mandatory argument, it is called null-valued , examples: rain , snow
If a verb requires exactly one mandatory argument, it is intransitive , examples: run , fall
If a verb requires exactly two mandatory arguments, it is transitive , examples: see , love
If it requires three arguments, it is ditransitive , examples: give , give

It is controversial whether there are verbs that require more than three mandatory arguments.

Transitivity in the broader sense

As mentioned at the beginning, the term transitivity is almost exclusively related to the valency of verbs. In the real sense, however, all predicates in a construction have a property of transitivity.

Verbs are usually viewed as the central structural element of a (sub-) sentence. The value of the verb determines the value of the entire construction, for example a construction based on a ditransitive verb is called a ditransitive construction . In school grammar, due to the central meaning of the verb or verb complex for a sentence, the term “predicate of the sentence” is also used, although every element of a sentence can be a predicate in the linguistic sense.

The linguistic concept of transitivity is not to be confused with the property of relations ( transitive relations ) over sets used in logic and mathematics . From the two sentences

(18)	Fritz annoys Peter

and

(19)	Peter annoys Maria

it does not automatically follow that Fritz annoys Maria, even if Peter is the same individual in both sentences and annoyance is the same transitive predicate in both sentences. In the mathematical sense, let us be the set of people and a transitive relation, with (with ) if and only if person annoys person , then with follows from ${\ displaystyle P}$ ${\ displaystyle A \ subseteq P \ times P}$ ${\ displaystyle (a, b) \ in A}$ ${\ displaystyle a, b \ in P}$ ${\ displaystyle a}$ ${\ displaystyle b}$ ${\ displaystyle x, z, y \ in P}$

(20)	${\ displaystyle (x, y) \ in A}$

and

(21)	${\ displaystyle (y, z) \ in A}$

imperative that applies. ${\ displaystyle (x, z) \ in A}$

Importance of transitivity

In linguistics, the transitivity property of a construction plays a central role in determining the casusalization of a language. Only when you know the transitive and intransitive verbs of a language can you say whether a language is an accusative language , an ergative language , an active language , a language with neutral alignment, a language with hierarchical alignment or an ergative-accusative language and accordingly which case it may have.

For example, if the only argument of an intransitive verb is marked with a case that corresponds to the case that also appears on the object of a transitive verb but not on its subject, the case is the so-called absolute (in some teachings also Nominative ) and an ergative language for language . The case of the subject of a transitive verb in such a language is called ergative and gives the type of language its name. If, on the other hand, the subjects of transitive and intransitive verbs have the same case and this differs from that of the object of a transitive verb, then it is an accusative language , the case of the object is called the accusative , that of the subject is called the nominative.

Transitivity as a semantic property

In order to be able to describe transitivity also semantically , Hopper / Thompson (1980: 252) use the following semantic characteristics, which may or may not be given in individual sentences (in German translation):

	high transitivity	low transitivity
Promotion type	telisch	atelic
Punctuality	selectively	non-selective
Affirmation	affirmative	negative
Concern the object (engl. Affectedness )	totally affected	not affected
Individualization of the property	highly individualized	not individualized

literature

Paul J. Hopper et al. Sandra A. Thompson: Transitivity in grammar and discourse . In: Language . Vol. 56, No. 2, 1980, pp. 251-299.

Individual evidence

↑ See for example the definition on www.grammatiken.de
↑ ^a ^b Transitive and intransitive verbs in Canoonet
↑ Glück, Helmut (2005) Transitiv In: Helmut Glück (Hrsg.), With the collaboration of Friederike Schmöe : Metzler Lexikon Sprach. 3rd, revised edition. Metzler, Stuttgart / Weimar 2005, ISBN 3-476-02056-8 , p. 694.
↑ Karin Pittner & Judith Berman: German Syntax. A work book. 4th edition. Narr, Tübingen 2010. p. 46
^ Adger, David (2003) Core Syntax: A Minimalist Approach . Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-924370-9
^ RH Robins (1958) The Yurok language: Grammar, texts, lexicon . Volume 15 of University of California Publications in Linguistics , University of California Press, Berkeley.

[1] See for example the definition on www.grammatiken.de

[canoo-2] Transitive and intransitive verbs in Canoonet

[3] Glück, Helmut (2005) Transitiv In: Helmut Glück (Hrsg.), With the collaboration of Friederike Schmöe : Metzler Lexikon Sprach. 3rd, revised edition. Metzler, Stuttgart / Weimar 2005, ISBN 3-476-02056-8 , p. 694.

[4] Karin Pittner & Judith Berman: German Syntax. A work book. 4th edition. Narr, Tübingen 2010. p. 46

[5] Adger, David (2003) Core Syntax: A Minimalist Approach . Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-924370-9

[6] RH Robins (1958) The Yurok language: Grammar, texts, lexicon . Volume 15 of University of California Publications in Linguistics , University of California Press, Berkeley.