Part 2: Verbs
Intransitive Verbs
Examples
The door opened.
A disaster happened.
Sparks flew between them.
The cost of living is increasing.
Definition
An intransitive verb only has one participant, the subject, or Agent, of the verb. This means the verb has no direct object, or Goal. The action or state happens without directly affecting another participant. Intransitive verbs often have indirect objects – something can happen to you or prices can increase for the retailer. In functional terms, this is the Recipient of the verb.
Functions
Intransitive verbs are interesting to analyze because they sometimes hide agency. In other words, they can hide the cause or instigator of an action or state. You can see this most clearly in verbs that have two forms: transitive (Agent-Verb-Goal) and intransitive (Agent-Verb). For example:
Tuition increased. (intransitive)
The university increased tuition. (transitive)
In the first sentence, tuition is the subject, but of course tuition is a thing that can’t really act, so we can’t call it the Agent. The sentence implies that tuition increases just happen to tuition, so we call it the Affected. In the second sentence, the university is the Agent that takes responsibility for the action of the verb, namely raising tuition. It is especially important to understand this pattern in social studies, where the cause of events is often critical. It is one thing to say violence broke out; it is entirely different to say a mob of angry men attacked the protestors.
Some intransitive verbs (technically called non-accusative, or ergative, verbs) are mislabelled as passive voice. Grammatically, intransitive verbs have no passive form since the passive raises the direct object (the Goal) to the subject position, and intransitive verbs don’t have this second participant. So intransitive verbs are never passive. But intransitive verbs often imply even less agency than the passive voice! Compare these sentences:
The Titanic sank. (ergative/intransitive: it happened to the ship)
The Titanic was sunk. (transitive, passive voice: something unnamed caused the ship to sink)
An iceberg sank the Titanic. (transitive, active voice: the iceberg was responsible)
Intransitive verbs can be found in all Key Language Uses. In texts that Explain or Inform, it is helpful to track the participants and see how the clauses present them as actors. In texts that Narrate, intransitive verbs can create tension and mystery, or make sentences more concise. In texts that Argue, care must be taken to ensure that the writer is not hiding the true agency of the verbs.
Careful!
Speakers of some languages may try to create passive clauses from intransitive verbs, which is ungrammatical in English (e.g. *the problem was happened; *the train was arrived).
It’s impossible to identify verbs as transitive or intransitive just by looking at them. It’s best to use a good learner’s dictionary.
You can help MLLs learn verbs by teaching them in clauses not just as independent items of vocabulary — e.g. rise (the sun rises in the east; prices are rising), raise (the restaurant raised its prices).
Many intransitive verbs have transitive forms with a slightly different meaning or effect — e.g. open (the door opened; I opened the door), walk (we’re walking; we’re walking our dog), wait (she’s waiting for her friend; she’s waiting tables at a restaurant).
Exercises
Additional practice exercisees:
- Choose a text you are teaching in class and highlight all the intransitive verbs and all the verbs that could be transitive or intransitive. What would happen if the writer changed the clause structure between transitive and intransitive?
- A lot of high-frequency verbs used to describe everyday activities are intransitive (wake up, get up, eat, walk, run, work, sleep, etc.). You can help developing writers extend their sentences by teaching them to add Circumstances (adverbs and prepositional phrases to their sentences), for example “I got up grumpily at 6 o’clock to the sound of my alarm clock.” How many ways can you extend these clauses? The children are running. Then, I eat. Are you working?
- Look through a news report about a crime. Where does the writer use intransitive or passive voice verbs? Why? How would the sentence be different if it used an active transitive verb?
