Hello everyone,
and welcome to another rendition of Grammar Jargon. As always we will try to explain one grammatical term in words every one can understand and this time
IT’S PERSONAL!
What we will look at today is the infamous concept of transitive vs. intranistive. While certainly not without use in linguistics, these 2 words have been among the least appreciated grammar terms for me… that is to say:
I pretty much hate them!
I speak English and French, I am able to hold conversation in Italian and I was able to write grammatical texts in Finnish… though that skill is currently off-line. Anyway… whenever I was learning a language, be it by myself or in a course, I was confronted with the transitive – intransitive babble at some point and yet, it was only when I started teaching that I finally grasped what those mean. The information about transitivity or transitiviteness or transigiveashit has NEVER helped me one little bit. Whenever it was mentioned in a book I would just ignore it. Any language I learned I learned DESPITE those terms.
I have sat in several German classes and I have made myself familiar with a fair number of textbooks and transitive is all over the place…. just as if anyone taking a B1 course automatically knows what this is supposed to be … a transitive verb.
So long rant short… I find the category one of the least useful in language teaching… it is highly abstract and has little to no benefit.
With that said, let’s explain the damn thing.
Transitive and the opposite intransitive are qualities or modes of verbs. So you can call a verb long, useful, funny, shopping related or transitive. Ok… that is a little misleading… whether a verb is transitive is of course not a matter of personal opinion like the other qualities I just mentioned but I hope you get the idea. What’s important to realize – especially in English – is that many verbs can be used in both ways – transitive AND intransitive… so it is not the verb but the verb in context that gets the label.
By the way… many dictionaries indicate the use mode with a little trans. or intr. If you look up lassen at Pons you will get one million translations filed under trans., then another million under aux. and then some more under intr.
Now what does it mean to call a verb transvestite… put in simpler terms it means that the verb dresses in womens clothing… but… that is kind of off topic so…
The label transitive is not uniquely defined. More on that later. For now let’s just say, that we talk about the English definition here… this may contradict the definition you are used to from your native language.
So… Transitive in English linguistics means that the verb takes a direct object… this is the explanation in most books. Now what is a direct object? It is the thing or person that is “verbed”.
- I drink a coffee.
The action in that sentence is drinking, I am the one doing it and the coffee is the thing that I do it to… poor coffee, poor and yet too tasty and energizing to spare.
- I see a tree.
Now here it is not so easy to look at the tree as something that experiences something but technically it is the very same structure as the first example. The action is seeing, I am the one doing it and the tree is the thing I do it to. So generally we could boil a transitive structure down to this:
- I verb something or someone.
This is the transitive situation. As soon as you have a preposition it does not count because here the object is NOT direct … it needs to be introduced.
- I verb to/with/of/by… someone or something.
This would be an intransitive situation as there is no direct object. Once again.. you can have a million things in your sentence… they are only direct if not preceded by a preposition and even for those there are exceptions.
Now some verbs can only be used in a transitive way, that is with a direct object, some can be used either way and some are always intransitive. An example for transitive-only would be to try. This just doesn’t make any sense without direct object.
- I try…. WHAT???
But what about “I try to sleep?”? Where is the direct object there? The answer is that there is none but the action to sleep is considered one… for… some linguistic reason… so this would be a transitive use too… in English linguistics that is.
Now let’s look at a verb that can’t take a direct object… to laugh.
- I laugh something or someone.
That won’t make sense no matter what you put in there. So to laugh can only be used in an intransitive way and… oh… my red exception phone is ringing… gotta take that call real quick… Hey John man, we haven’t talked in a while… yeah I know I know… bet you did hahaha… so… what do you have for me… oh… oh yeah right that IS confusing, I’ll mention it… yeah thanks a lot man. Bye.
So John, my exception watch dog actually spotted something important… look at this sentence.
- I laugh 10 minutes every day.
That does totally fit the structure of “I verb something” … but only superficially. 10 minutes comes right after laugh but it is not really connected to it. 10 minutes gives the information about time. It answers to the question How long?. A direct object always answers to who or what. So “I laugh 10 minutes” is an intransitive situation.
What’s missing now is a verb that can be used either way… those are also called ambitransitive … a term you may forget immediately :). A good example for an ambitransitive verb is to help… what? You want to know what ambitransitive means? Well it is the term if a verb can be used… kidding… moving on.
- How can I help?
- How can I help you?
The first sentence is intransitive, the second is transitive because there is the direct object you in there.
And now, still looking at the last example, we shall ask ourselves what is the use of such distinction… and the answer is:
None.
Don’t get me wrong. It surely has its use in linguistics but for normal people it is just superfluous jargon. And this is not only because a direct object is kind of abstract but also because a transitive verb in English might be intransitive in German and vice versa. This is actually the biggest problem I have with this whole matter: as I mentioned before, the definitions do not match. For example, in French also an indirect object makes a verb transitive.
- I dream of Paris.
- Je rêve de Paris.
According to the English definition it is intransitive, according to the French it is transitive… so why should I care??? If the definitions are so flexible the concept can’t be that essential… I mean look at the concept verb… or past … those are a bit more relevant ;).
What really tears it though is the fact that people throw around the terms so much. And they use them without really making sure that they have they right definition. They even use them for basic rules. I have found a French grammar in German that is just plain wrong. First they say that transitive verbs are those with an accusative object – and that is the German definition… in a grammar for FRENCH, I mean, shouldn’t we use the FRENCH definition there???. Then they say that all those transitive (by German standards mind you) verbs build their past with avoir while the others need être. That is just wrong because the German definition of transitive has nothing to do with the French reality. If I did what said grammar told me to, I would end up speaking ungrammatical French. Their explanations sound all smart and yet it is but a load of crap. And why… because they just use the terms without ever thinking about them or knowing some background.
So to sum this up… transitive is a label that expresses something with objects but the exact definition may vary from language to language. Let’s say if you can do whatever you do to something or someone. That is a very rough but ok summary of the idea. As mentioned before a 100% definition depends on the language you look at… German transitive is NOT the same as the English, English is NOT the same as the French and so on.
Let’s imagine a fictional language and let’s name it…. hmmmm…”Coolian”. So in Coolian the action of sitting is actually done to the chair. They say:
- I sit the chair.
if they want to say
- I sit on a chair.
Taking a closer look might show that their word is actually not exactly to sit but “to burden” if translated literally. So they say “I burden the chair” but they mean “I sit on a chair”. Now if you want your students to understand that they must say “the chair” after “sit” you can either say:
- Hey students… in Coolian, to sit is transitive.
Or you can say:
- Hey students… in Coolian you don’t “sit” on a chair. They don’t have that word. They say “I burden a chair” but it means the same.
Both explanation have the same effect… students will use the verbs transitively… either because they know that they are supposed to do so or because the think of it as “to burden” which they know can be used transitively. And if I have to decide which way I want it explained to me,
I’ll definitely go for the latter because it is just closer to my every day language reality.
I hope that language teachers and textbooks stop to throw the words transitive – intransitive at the students… some day.
So… this was our Grammar Jargon for this time. It was quite personal and purely subjective and I am actually interested in what you think about all that. Do you like the concept? Have you even heard of it before in class? Do you think I’m an ignorant idiot who’s writing a drunk rant abo… anyway, leave you’re thoughts in the comments and if you have any questions about the article or I have said something wrong somewhere. please leave a comment as well.
I hope you liked it and see you next time.
The example of, “I laugh 10 minutes.” Sounds peculiar in English. We would say I laugh FOR 10 minutes. With the added preposition, it becomes intransitive.
So I actually asked about this in an English language forum and people said it can be grammatically correct, but it should have some additions.
– I laugh 10 minutes every time I hear this joke.
You can check the question and the replies and discussion here:
https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/65072/is-i-laugh-10-minutes-grammatical
Side note: in German “Ich lache 10 Minuten” is perfectly fine and yet intransitive.
“Laugh” can indeed be used transitively, at least in English:
Of course, German probably wouldn’t use similar constructions to translate my examples!
Actually, you could translate both examples pretty much verbatim. It’s fringe, but it works :)
Vielen vielen dank!
Ich habe mich mit Intransitiv vs Transitiv verben herumgeschlagt. Aber diese Artikel macht so viel Sinn, es ist wirklich unglaublich, wie einfach es ist jetzt. Du bist ein Heiliger
Hi Emanuel –
thanks for sharing your thoughts on this topic! Certainly a different perspective than the textbooks. I am wondering if I am reading too much into the definition of the transitive verbs – transitive verbs are not precluded from having an indirect object/dative object? It’s just that in certain cases they do not need a preposition to highlight the noun e.g beantworten die Frage vs antworten auf die Frage. However in both of these verbs there is a dative object – antworten dir/beantworten dir.
so to summarize, transitive verbs can still have dative or indirect objects?
I’d say yes, but with a grain of salt. It’s been a long time since I have written this rant and I actually kind of need to revisit it and also the formal definitions to double check :).
Generally, I think the terms really are useless for a learner, and we can just say “needs a direct object” or “doesn’t need one”. And the rest is optional.
I so feel your pain. I was used to the transitive vs intransitive distinctions in my mother-tongue (Portuguese), which are yet again different from English and German at the same time.
You see, in Portuguese a verb that takes a complement (either with or without a preposition) is a transitive verb.
A verb that does not take a complement (ever) is an intransitive verb.
What you call a (German) intransitive verb, when you have no direct object, would actually be classified in Portuguese as an INDIRECT transitive verb, because the verb still requires a complement, but in an indirect way, via a preposition.
So to recap, in Portuguese, every verb can be transitive or intransitive, and those that are transitive, can be direct transitives (when they require an object without a preposition) or indirect transitives (when they require an object with a preposition).
Which made me superconfused to see intransitive verbs in German that take complements with a preposition… Thanks for the post!
(IMHO the Portuguese definition for transitiviness is the best and most simple and should be adopted for all the languages. Or perhaps Professora Marisa, my Grammar teacher in high-school terrorised me so much that the rules are so deeply ingrained in my brain that it just seems the Right and Only way to me).
Hey Lynnyo,
I need to approve comments before they get posted. That’s why they don’t show up immediately. Sometimes it takes me a while but they will show eventually. I’ll answe your questions tomorrow or the day after
“I laugh 10 minutes.” This is a statement that fluent spearkers of English would say. One would say “I laughed for 10 minutes” or possibly “I laughed 10 minutes.” which makes your point a little clearer.
This blog is great.
Thank you.
Wait, do you mean “would say” or “wouldn’t say” in the first sentence?
Hallo! To answer your French question, yes, there is an accent to “rêver”. Also, maybe when you wrote “I would always ignored it” you meant “I would always ignore it” and when you wrote “It surely has it’s use in linguistics”, you meant ” It surely has its use in linguistics”? :) Thanks for the explanation by the way, it’s amazing (though the concept itself is incredibly misleading)
Tu as raison avec tes corrections :). Merci!! Und auch danke für das liebe Feedback.
Hallo !
Thanks for explaining all of that, your blog is awesome.
But as a native french speaker, it made me laugh when I read “soigner de Paris” because it doesn’t make any sense. Soigner is used like “to cure” haha! I also speak spanish and italian so i guessed you made it from soñar or sognare.
Whatever, this made me smile in between two difficult made easy explanation of transitive and intransitive words! Danke :)
Ops… you’re right. That was most likely inspired by Italian “sogni d’oro”.
One question though… do I have to use “rever” (I feel like there should be an accent but I’m not sure) or would “sogner” be idiomtic too?
Merci beaucoup pour ton feedback
Oh god, my French is so rusty. I don’t even remember how to say something like “liebe Grüße” :)
Ja, toll, vielen Dank. Hast mir sehr geholfen!
Sorry, I know this is an older post. I hope it’s ok to ask for quick clarification. Ich hatte nie wirklich Probleme, den Unterschied zwischen transitive und intransitive verbs zu verstehen aber nur zur Sicherheit: Ein Verb, das in Kombination mit einer Akkusativ Praeposition benutzt wird, wird dadurch nicht transitiv, oder? Zum Beispiel: “Ich bin den Weg entlang gegangen.” Gehen waere hier immer noch intransitive, obwohl “den Weg” Akkusativ ist. Hier waeren also Akkusativ und direct object nicht dasselbe, korrekt?
Danke, Natascha
Klar kannst du fragen :)…. alt oder nicht ist total egal. Eine Sprache ändert sich ja nicht so schnell.
Also…
Ja, ich glaube nach der deutschen Definition ist das immer noch eine intransitive Verwendung. Sonst wäre ja auch
– Ich gehe ins Kino..
transitiv.
Nein, Akkusativ und direktes Objekt sind nicht immer dasselbe. Immer wenn es eine Präposition gibt, ist es nicht das direkte Objekt, kann aber Akkusativ sein.
Hilft das :)?
[…] I had a look on the web and this link seemed to be the most helpful even though it was referring to German transitive and intransitive […]
Yes, I have just reread the text. I was trying to produce a counter example to what you where saying but only succeeded in confirming that
“Try” is always transitive. Sorry.
There is always one I suppose and on this occasion it is me. I do not appreciate your humour as I thingk it gets in the way, but I can ignore those bits when I read the piece for the second time. I appreciate your efforts to try to make the subject matter light and accessible and I found (and am still finding) the site really useful. I stumbled over it having Googled the diffference between to modal verbs (I forget which ones) and liked the site so much I decided to give it a day of my time learning what was on it. That was 3 days ago and I am still not finished. Either I am a slow learner or there is really a lot of content here.
I am 2 weeks into a 6 week recuperation from an operation during which time I am prety well foreced to do nothing so I decided to learn German as every year I go to the Alps to fly my glider and am pretty much the only English speaker, everyone else being native German speakers. They all seem to speak English so they kindly use that language in the evening when we are all drinking together but I thought that after a lifetime of being monolingual I should at least make an effort.
I have been using a program called Duolingo that seems to be working but it is good on saying and writing but very poor to nonexistant on the grammar which for an old scientific brain like mine is essential. Any tips or direction you can give me would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks for the clarification. When I read the first comment I actually thought that it WAS a counter example and I checked the respective part of the text and I felt relieve. The post has been up for a while and a having a major error in there would have been bad. Anyway, so since said that you have a scientific brain I would suggest to actually go to Wikipedia and read up on the Grammar there. Or get a German grammar in a nutshell (no more than 20 pages). You will then see a fair bit of terminology that is probably new to you but I strongly believe that everyone who is able to do a bachelor is also able comprehend grammar. It is not rocket science after all. For someone who has had little to no contact with the theory of language it all seems complicated at first but it isn’t. If you’re willing to invest some extra time to get clarity about some linguistic concepts independent of German you can then check out the grammar really quickly. If I want to see how a language works I go to Wikipedia and look for short answers to the questions I have:
– how do they build their tense
– how to draw comparisons
– what is the word order
– do they have cases and if so which ones
– what kind of declensions do they do
and that is it. Sure enough, that doesn’t make you speak it but you can get a good overview about the structure in just 2 days… especially if you’re a scientist. All you need to do then is to apply apply apply.
I don’t like Duolingo that much. For beginners it might be ok, but many of their examples are REALLY contrived and un-idiomatic. Also, I am not fond of computer based learning anyway because I think a lot of your brain capacity is wasted on constantly clicking some buttons, tracking your progress, commenting, being distracted by the forces of the Web.
My advice is “reading”. Go to Amazon and order some novels that are made for students. There are many crime novels with simple German in them (for any level) but also bilingual literature or simplified Kafka and stuff like that. Then, look up every word you don’t know and if you deem it useful, note it in a notebook or on a flashcard. If you look up a word 10 times… well, that’s good. It will stick eventually.
So… If you’re not scared of some dry, concise information (and I think you are not), look up the grammar with as little explanation as possible… just schemes. If you don’t understand some of the jargon, check out what it is in your own mother tongue. And then read and gorge down vocabulary. That should do for starters. To top that with a little hearing you could either get a CD or find something to listen to online. Learn the language as you would learn any other science… like chemistry or physics or anthropology. Read, learn the terminology and that’s it. Sounds contrary to what everyone else is saying but ultimately you will only get fluency by training anyway… language is a automatism. Grammar is just a mean to structure and organize it in your head. Oh and one last thing… don’t waste time on gender and cases. They are important but they will take time. You can look at the tables all you want. It won’t help you a bit when you speak. Everything else is more important … especially everything connected to verbs. Think of it as Google Earth. You see the big picture first and the details when you zoom in. Adjective endings are such a detail.
So… that was quite long but I really hope you find some pieces of useful advice in what I’ve said :). Viel Erfolg beim Lernen und gute Besserung.
Thank you for taking the time. Duolingo at least makes me listen and translate a lot of German. I find the learning of vocabulary very difficult and tedious
but the program sort of forces you to do it. I will see what I can find in Amazon.
Thank you for taking so much time to answer.
Incidentally “Good luck with the learning and get well soon” (and good recovery) . I had to look up both nouns and discover the phrase “Viel Erfolg”
Kafka could take a long time!
Alan
What is:
“I try medication but the pain remains”
(It sounds better in the past: “I tried medication but the pain remains”)
I don’t get it…
Hmm, as a native English speaker, I know many odd ways of speaking, but never have I heard anyone say something like “I laugh 10 minutes.” Everyone I know would put in a for, making it “I laugh for 10 minutes”. Maybe a moot point, but just something I felt should be pointed out.
I wasn’t sure about this so I asked it in a forum… they said, that in certain (probably rare) contexts it could work… so I used it. But yeah… it is definitely contrived :)… here’s the link if anyone is interested.
https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/65072/is-i-laugh-10-minutes-grammatical
How about “They laughed him off the stage”? I could see that being used in English, although “laugh” in that context would basically mean “ridicule”, which does seem to be a transitive verb. (Love your blog, by the way! When I’ve read everything new, I go looking for these older posts.)
Nice idea :)… that would totally work in German, too. So I guess “to laugh” isn’t purely intransitive either. I guess the verbs that REALLY can’t take a direct object are rare and for most there are use cases like this one. One more argument to not classify verbs but only the situation they’re used in.
Thanks a lot. Question. Ok I understood what transitive and intransitive means. But what does the word ‘transitive’ mean in this context? what is the verb ‘transiting’? Does it mean that the verb is a ‘intermediary’ that is a direct object is needed on the other side of the verb. The choice of words in English grammar is so confusing sometimes.
Hmmm … I have never heard that before and the only source I could find is this:
https://www.differencebetween.net/language/difference-between-transitive-and-intransitive-verbs/
There, they simply use the English verb to transit to explain the term transitive since they are related. I don’t think it is a linguistical term like “Under this and that circumstances the normally intransitive verb is transiting bluh bluh bluh….” … talking about language is always difficult but I think English linguistics are especially twisted… but English is not an easy language to describe anyway :)
I have one question.
If it’s said that for example “agree” is transitive or intransitive in BrE and intransitive in AmE, which of these sentences is in AmE?
– agree a contract
– agree to/on a contract
Just based on your setup the second would be AmE but I am not a native English speaker and this is beyond what I can tell for sure… that is to say that I don’t know whether the first would really be unheard of in AmE… Sorry I can’t be of more help…
Thank you so much :D
In AmE, “to agree a contract” does sound totally wrong (to my ear anyway).
Well, thank you! I always thought about transitive and intransitive verbs in reference to English Linguistics, assuming direct objects took accusative case. Yet, I can be useful at times, like ‘anlachen’. I was confused how to make my sentence with it, and had to refer to whether it was transitive or intransitive.
Yeah… it is useful in cases like anlachen… and once you really know what it is it can help. I just don’t like how the definitions are different… I really prefer “Anlachen must be done to someone”
BTW… do you know that anlachen can also mean to attract?
Ich lache mir in der Bar eine Frau an….
That means that I flirt with her and we probably go home together. The focus here is not so much that I smile at her but that I get her… consequently people use this anlachen also for stuff. In that context it sounds kind of sceptical… in sense of to aquire… not a lot but see for yourself:
https://www.rc-heli.de/board/showthread.php?t=194309 (they talk about a model chopper)
https://mz-forum.com/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=55286 (motorbike)
https://green-24.de/forum/ftopic63994.html (a plant from Ireland)
So it basically means we feel attracted to that person/thing? Thanks! Revisions in my vocab notebook again.
no no… it means that we purchase or acquire it…
Ich habe ein neues Motorrad gekauft.
Ich habe mir ein neues Motorrad angelacht.
kind of that… as I said, it is not used that much so just keep it in your passive vocab
Hmm… I feel silly now. Thank goodness I am lazy enough not to scribble stuff on my notebook. And as you have said, I wouldn’t now anyway. In any case, I always await your posts since each one of them is so informative. Thank you, once again! This is all I can do right now, for all the labour who do for us all. (:
Actually anlachen is reflexive, in the acquisitive sense, for which Ancient Greek had a separate tense/modus. Assuming you wouldn’t say Ich lache dir ein Motorrad an.
Transitive means the effect of the action is transferred to another ie. object. For german grammar it’s the direct object. That is why in German passive voice, the direct object in the active voice that is in the akkusativ case becomes nominative in passiv. And the dativ object remains dativ in the german passiv voice. It’s little difficult for english students. Ich verstehe auch nicht ganz genau.
That is a very shaky definition, at least for a layman.
Many people who are not linguists would have trouble seeing a transfer of action in the first one while they’d tend to see “you” as “receiving a transfer”.
It’s actually kind of hard to define “transitive” in everyday terms and be precise at the same time :)