Herb,

Thanks -- the connection to licensing gave me a better idea of where I was wanting to disagree. I'd rather deal with the distinction between "Patient-less 'eat'" and "Patient-ful 'eat'" as a difference in process type, with the form being associated with two different process types, but it's not like I can rule out other accounts. I suspect 'transitivity' is somewhat like 'markedness' -- it's been used in enough ways that the only guaranteed safe course is to include an operating definition and be ready to duck. 

With undergrads, I just say that a lot of verbs can be used with more than one sense, and that construction type can vary along with that (an account I have to use for the linking/non-linking versions of 'smell', etc. anyway). Of course, I seem to have trouble convincing them that defining verbs simply as "action words" is an oversimplification, so I'm not sure my explanations are particularly effective....


Bill Spruiell


-----Original Message-----
From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar on behalf of STAHLKE, HERBERT F
Sent: Wed 4/28/2010 11:12 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: ATEG Digest - 15 Mar 2010 to 17 Mar 2010 (#2010-37)
 
Bill,

I'm retired and not grading anymore, which may be why "is why."  If I remember right, I used to occasionally object to it.  But beyond that, you're asking me to dredge up work on transitivity I haven't looked at for years.  There is, of course, a significant difference, as Craig and I were discussing, between what we say to undergrad grammar students and what we might to in a linguistic typology class.  At the undergrad grammar level, I wouldn't even raise some of these issues.  Getting across four kinds of transitivity is by itself sufficiently challenging, especially when a bright student asks why "hate" in "I hate canned green beans" doesn't feel like a transitive.  The answer that its subject is a Patient always loses a sizable portion of the class.

Linguistically, however, transitives don't require agents and objects; they license them, which is why with verbs like eat, drink, etc. can occur without objects and passive transitives can occur without agents.  And cross-linguistically passive gets truly difficult to define.  Some languages simply lack the necessary promotion rules and use impersonals instead as a way to eliminate mention of the agent, and there are other strategies as well.

Once again, it comes down to our audience and how much they are ready to handle.

Herb
________________________________
From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Spruiell, William C
Sent: Wednesday, April 28, 2010 7:10 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: ATEG Digest - 15 Mar 2010 to 17 Mar 2010 (#2010-37)


Herb,

I'm going to whinge about your use of "is why..." but I have to acknowledge up front it's a very picky whinge (and one probably motivated by the fact that I've been grading, have tons more to grade, and can use arguing as an avoidance strategy....)

The traditional use of 'transitive' was related to number of complements, I think, with passivization causing a reduction (so ditransitive --> transitive, and transitive --> intransitive). That certainly appears to be how the term is used in Latinate grammars; 'transitive' is basically equivalent to 'requires an object', although the object in question isn't restricted to the accusative. It's possible to maintain that sense of the term while at the same time acknowledging that the participant roles associated with a given process remain the same whether the process is realized as an active or passive. So, passives are traditional-intransitive, but nevertheless can pattern with an Agent and a Patient as required accompanying roles.

If 'transitive' is defined in terms of required participant role frames, on the other hand, then yes, passivized transitives do remain transitive - but it looks like they do so necessarily, by virtue of the definition. The one doesn't explain the other; it's a matter of consistency rather than causation. Or am I completely misreading this (a possibility I won't discount at all)?

Bill Spruiell
Dept. of English
Central Michigan University



From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Gerald Walton
Sent: Wednesday, April 28, 2010 5:28 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: ATEG Digest - 15 Mar 2010 to 17 Mar 2010 (#2010-37)

On 4/28/2010 3:40 PM, STAHLKE, HERBERT F wrote:

Your quotation seems to assume that transitive and intransitive are complementary sets.  A transitive in the passive remains transitive, which is why its subject is Patient and it still allows an Agent phrase.  The first is commonly true of intransitives though not of all of them, but the second is never true of intransitives.
Yeah, I know that is the view of most grammarians. Pence and Emery say, though (see below) contended that a transitive verb when changed to the passive becomes intransitive. At least by 1965 I had never found anybody else who agreed with them, thus an article I published in American Speech on the subject.

...two grammarians have written "A transitive verb may be turned into the passive voice, in which case it becomes an intransitive verb."
Gerald
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