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:
“... there are two types of happiness and I have chosen that of the murderers. For I am happy. There was a time when I thought I had reached the limit of distress. Beyond that limit, there is a sterile and magnificent happiness.”
—Albert Camus (1913–1960)
“As for types like my own, obscurely motivated by the conviction that our existence was worthless if we didn’t make a turning point of it, we were assigned to the humanities, to poetry, philosophy, painting—the nursery games of humankind, which had to be left behind when the age of science began. The humanities would be called upon to choose a wallpaper for the crypt, as the end drew near.”
—Saul Bellow (b. 1915)
“If there is nothing new on the earth, still the traveler always has a resource in the skies. They are constantly turning a new page to view. The wind sets the types on this blue ground, and the inquiring may always read a new truth there.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)