In
last week’s column, we recalled that English verbs are of four types—transitive, intransitive, linking, and helping or auxiliary.
Both transitive verbs and intransitive verbs belong to a class called
action verbs, but they differ in a crucial respect.
Transitive verbs can pass on its action to something that can receive that action, as in the sentence “He
drives a sedan” in which the verb “drives” passes on its action to the object “sedan.” In contrast,
intransitive verbs can’t pass on its action to anything, as in the sentence “The woman
disappears” in which the verb “disappears” dissipates its action in itself.
IMAGE CREDIT: TES.COM/TEACHING-RESOURCE IMAGE CREDIT: YOUTUBE.COMIt’s also important to remember that transitive verbs can either be dynamic or stative.
Dynamic verbs describe actions or events that happen in a particular moment in time, as the verb “push” in “They
pushed the car,” while
stative verbs show a state or condition and not an action, as the verb “know” in “They
know the truth.” What distinguishes a stative verb from a dynamic verb is that a stative verb becomes dysfunctional—meaning grammatically wrong—in the continuous or progressive tense, as what happens to the stative verb “know” in the sentence “They are
knowing the truth.”
The confusion over stative verbs and dynamic verbs arises because depending on how they are used, some verbs can either be stative or dynamic. For instance, the verb “think” is stative in “I
think she’s lovely” (an opinion that she’s lovely) but dynamic in “I am
thinking of her future” (the act of considering her future).
A reliable test to find out if a verb is stative through and through is when it can’t be used in a sentence dynamically at all. One such verb is “belong.” It’s stative in “That laptop
belongs to me” but dysfunctional when used dynamically in this present-progressive sentence: “That laptop is
belonging to me.” This means that “belong” can only be a stative verb and never a dynamic one.
IMAGE CREDIT: AMERICAN ENGLISH AT STATEBut some verbs, like “hate” and “love,” can be stative or dynamic depending on how they are used. They are stative in the sentences “She
hates hypocrites” and “He
loves crime novels,” but dynamic in the declarative sentence “This morning, we
hated the way she maltreated her subordinates” and in the imperative “
Love your neighbor!”
We must be careful not to confuse stative verbs with linking verbs. Some stative verbs can be linking verbs, as the verb “feel” in “She
feels sad,” where we clearly can substitute “is” for “feels”: “She
is sad.” But many stative verbs are definitely not linking verbs, as the verb “love” in “We
love the color pink” and “have” in “They
have a grudge against her.” (This is obvious because we can’t replace “love” with “are” to say “We
are the color pink,” and neither can we replace “have” with “are” to say “They
are a grudge against her.”)
But are all linking verbs intransitive verbs? By definition, linking verbs don’t act on an object but simply make English sentences flow correctly and smoothly. That makes all linking verbs intransitive verbs, which by definition are verbs that can’t pass on their action to anything in the sentence.
And then this final question: Are all stative verbs intransitive? The answer is “no.” A stative verb is intransitive if it works without a direct object, but transitive if it needs a direct object to function. In the sentence “He
believes in miracles,” for instance, the verb “believe” is intransitive but is stative because it can’t pass on its action to an object. The verb “prefer” is likewise stative in the sentence “Gentlemen
prefer blondes,” but it acts on the noun “blondes” as direct object, so here “prefer” is obviously a transitive verb.
This essay, 1,115th of the series, appeared in the column “English Plain and Simple” by Jose A. Carillo in the Campus Press section of the October 25, 2018 issue (print edition only) of The Manila Times
, © 2018 by the Manila Times Publishing Corp. All rights reserved.(Next:
A full-dress review of the verb types in English - 3) November 1, 2018
