Jose Carillo's English Forum
Joe Carillo's Desk => You Asked Me This Question => Topic started by: reza on July 06, 2012, 06:40:01 PM
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hi there
i have problem with intransitive verb which takes object or how it can take object .EX: I go to school with my friend . here go is intransitive and my friend is object but we know that intransitive verb never takes object if they take object with prepositions so what the parts of speech of go and my friend are ? i mean that if intransitive verb comes with object like above sentence , the form change to transitve verb or not ? thanks in advance .
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You’re right that “go” is an intransitive verb in this sentence: “I go to school with my friend.” However, “my friend” is not the object of the verb “go” in that sentence; it is part of the prepositional phrase “with my friend,” which is an adverbial phrase modifying the main clause “I go to school.” In that main clause, the noun “school” is actually the object of the preposition “to”; this preposition transmits the action of the verb “go” to the object “school.” As an intransitive verb, “go” can’t take an object, but in this particular construction, it uses the preposition as an “intermediary” for transmitting its action to the noun “school,” which then functions as the so-called “object of the preposition.”
When an intransitive verb uses a preposition to transmit its action to an object in such situations, that verb doesn’t change into a transitive verb. It remains an intransitive verb, but one that has to use a preposition to grammatically connect to an object. It is unlike a transitive verb, which as we know always needs a direct object to be able to function properly in a sentence. (For instance, when we drop the direct object “cars” in the sentence “Fred fixes cars for a living,” the transitive verb “fixes” no longer functions properly, and nor does the sentence itself, as we can see in the following object-less, nonsensical construction: “Fred fixes for a living.”)