Types
While all verbs that take at least one object are considered transitive, verbs can be further classified by the number of objects they take. Verbs that require exactly one object are called monotransitive. Verbs that are able to take two objects, a direct object and an indirect object, are called ditransitive. An example in English is the verb to give. There are also a few verbs, like "to trade" in the English language, that may be called "tritransitive" because they take three objects.
In contrast to transitive verbs, some verbs take zero objects. Verbs that do not require an object are called intransitive; for example, consider the verb to die.
Verbs that can be used in an intransitive or transitive way are called ambitransitive. In English, an example is the verb to eat, since the sentences You eat (with an intransitive form) and You eat apples (a transitive form that has apples as the object) are both grammatically correct.
The valency of a verb is a related concept. The valency of a verb considers all the arguments the verb takes, including both the subject of the verb and all of the objects. In contrast to valency, the transitivity of a verb only considers the objects.
Read more about this topic: Transitive Verb
Famous quotes containing the word types:
“He types his laboured column—weary drudge!
Senile fudge and solemn:
Spare, editor, to condemn
These dry leaves of his autumn.”
—Robertson Davies (b. 1913)
“The American man is a very simple and cheap mechanism. The American woman I find a complicated and expensive one. Contrasts of feminine types are possible. I am not absolutely sure that there is more than one American man.”
—Henry Brooks Adams (1838–1918)
“Our major universities are now stuck with an army of pedestrian, toadying careerists, Fifties types who wave around Sixties banners to conceal their record of ruthless, beaverlike tunneling to the top.”
—Camille Paglia (b. 1947)