Re: (Conlangs) Q&A Thread - Quick questions go here
Posted: 05 Feb 2021 14:19
This is called "transitivity", and is very common.
As well as the inherent transitivity of the event-type, grammatical transitivity can also take into account the agency of the agent (actions that are accidental or involuntary may sometimes be encoded as intransitive), the definiteness of the action (actions with generic and/or indefinite (including partitive) agents or patients may sometimes be encoded as intransitive), and the success or completion of the action (actions that are attempted unsuccessfully or that are begun but not fully completed may sometimes be encoded as intransitive), and probably some other things that I'm not immediately thinking of. Transitivity can be connected to systems like animacy hierarchies, voice, aspect/telicity and subjecthood.
English doesn't have compulsory transitivity marking, but it does have a lot of optional transitivity marking: intransitives are often marked by valency-reduction and the use of an oblique governed by a proposition, and sometimes an adverb. For instance, we have transitive "kick", and intransitive "kick at" and "kick out at". We have "speak" (a word, a poem, created by the action), but "speak of" (a thing, not affected by the action).
As in English, transitivity is often marked in part through valency, but this isn't obligatory: some languages have dedicated transitivity markings on the verb, for instance. And of course valency itself can be explicitly marked on the verb, or zero-marked.
As well as the inherent transitivity of the event-type, grammatical transitivity can also take into account the agency of the agent (actions that are accidental or involuntary may sometimes be encoded as intransitive), the definiteness of the action (actions with generic and/or indefinite (including partitive) agents or patients may sometimes be encoded as intransitive), and the success or completion of the action (actions that are attempted unsuccessfully or that are begun but not fully completed may sometimes be encoded as intransitive), and probably some other things that I'm not immediately thinking of. Transitivity can be connected to systems like animacy hierarchies, voice, aspect/telicity and subjecthood.
English doesn't have compulsory transitivity marking, but it does have a lot of optional transitivity marking: intransitives are often marked by valency-reduction and the use of an oblique governed by a proposition, and sometimes an adverb. For instance, we have transitive "kick", and intransitive "kick at" and "kick out at". We have "speak" (a word, a poem, created by the action), but "speak of" (a thing, not affected by the action).
As in English, transitivity is often marked in part through valency, but this isn't obligatory: some languages have dedicated transitivity markings on the verb, for instance. And of course valency itself can be explicitly marked on the verb, or zero-marked.