Transitive and Intransitive verbs: The Difference
Transitive and Intransitive verbs: The Difference
Transitive and Intransitive verbs are one of the many categories of verbs that exist in the English language. As words that describe actions, state of being or relations, transitive and intransitive verbs are a category of verbs that are always finite, that is, they are always conjugated to reflect person, tense, and number in clauses and sentences.
Transitive Verbs
Transitive verbs, as the name implies, are verbs that take an object. That is, verbs whose actions translate into an object. For ease of reference, you can compare transitive verbs with transiting, a movement from one place to another. So when you hear about transitive verbs, you can be sure that they are verbs that that transit into objects. For example;
1. He knows her.
2. John bought snacks.
3. The Mayor eats donuts.
4. Charissa sings soprano.
5. She put the book up.
Transitive verbs can be classified into Monotransitive and Ditransitive verbs.
Monotransitive verbs
As the name implies, Monotransitive verbs are transitive verbs that take a single object—the direct object. For example;
1. He picked the book.
2. She smashed the glass.
3. They cut the grass.
Ditransitive verbs
Ditransitive verbs, on the other hand, are transitive verbs that take two objects. That is, they take both a direct object and an indirect object. For example;
1. She gave the book to John.
2. Margaret told Samantha the truth.
3. Aishwarya Rai is married to an American.
4. They were introduced to Mitchell.
5. She threw the books at him.
Intransitive verbs
Unlike transitive verbs, intransitive verbs are verbs that do not take an object. That is, they do not transit into objects. For example;
1. It disappeared.
2. She smiled.
3. The boys hollered.
4. It rained.
5. Mr. Chang ate.
Now some persons are of the opinion that all transitive verbs can only function as transitive and can not be intransitive—however, you might want to question that opinion with these examples;
1. She sang. (Intransitive)
2. She sang a song. (Transitive)
3. They played. (Intransitive)
4. They played football. (Transitive)
So it can be inferred from the above stated examples that not all transitive verbs are limited to functioning as transitives as a number of them can function both as transitive and intransitive verbs.
Another misconception about intransitive verbs is about what follows them in sentences. Take for example;
1. She writes very well.
2. It is at the door.
3. He looked towards the door.
4. She walked to the door.
5. It happened very fast.
Typically, a number of persons would mark examples 2 - 4 as transitive verbs because of the prepositional phrases that follow them, considering those to be indirect objects. But that, however, is not the case. Prepositional phrases usually function as adverbials in which case they modify verbs or sentences, especially when they come right after verbs in sentences. It is also known that they can form indirect objects, but when they do not follow direct objects immediately in sentences—or when there are no direct objects in structures they occur in, they can no longer be tagged as indirect objects because their functions change to that of Adverbial. For instance, in example 3;
a. He looked towards the door:
'towards the door' is a prepositional phrase that gives circumstantial information about the direction in which he looked and does not in any way indicate that the subject of the sentence has carried any action on it. In fact, 'the door' in 'towards the door' is certainly an object, but, an object of the preposition 'towards'.
So these are the differences between transitive and intransitive verbs. While transitive verbs can take objects, Intransitive verbs do not take objects but there is a possibility that some Intransitive verbs can also function as transitive verbs.
Try answering this question in the comments:
1. He laughed at the girls.
Is the verb transitive or intransitive?
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