1.3.4.1 Verbs

Traditionally, verbs which have nominal complements are called transitive and those without intransitive. The verb await is a transitive verb and wait is intransitive. However, another kind of intransitive verb has no complement at all:

1.3.4.1 Verbs

Various types of transitive verbs can also be distinguished. For example there are those which take one nominal complement and those which take two:

1.3.4.1 Verbs

Finally, there are verbs which are often traditionally called transitives, but which do not have a nominal complement at all. These verbs take sentences as their complements.

1.3.4.3 Adjectives

Yet, if we consider the total set of possible positions for adjectives and adverbs, we notice that where an adverb can appear an adjective cannot and vice versa. In other words, the two are in complementary distribution, just like transitive and intransitive verbs. In the case of verbs we took their complementary distributions to be evidence that they are of the same category and, therefore, there is no reason why we should not argue the same here in relation to adjectives and adverbs.

1.3.4.3 Adjectives

A final argument for seeing adjectives and adverbs as being of the same category has to do with the system of categorisation introduced in the preceding section. Above we pointed out that while verbs are able to take nominal complements, nouns are not. Adjectives are like nouns in this respect. For example, when we derive an adjective from a transitive verb, the adjective must take a prepositional complement, not a nominal one:

2.1.2 Phrases

It seems that in the position where we have pestered Dennis we can have the verb persisted. This is not surprising as the verb pestered is used transitively in (11a), with a nominal complement (Dennis) whereas persisted is used intransitively in (11b), without a complement. However, if intransitive verbs distribute the same as transitive verbs plus their complements, this means that transitive verbs and their complements form a phrase that has a distribution in the same way that a determiner with its nominal complement distributed like certain nouns. Thus a more accurate description of the sentence than (9) would be:

2.2.2 The object

Presumably this is one of the reasons why verbs which have clausal complements have traditionally been considered as transitive verbs. There are, however, a number of differences between clausal and DP complements. One is that clauses obviously do not appear in accusative Case. However, given that it is only the pronouns in English that demonstrate Case distinctions, this is not surprising. Another difference is that not all clausal complements can undergo passive movement:

3.2 Theoretical Aspects of Movement

The verb hate typically has two arguments, experiencer and theme, and is transitive with the theme as its object:

3.2.3 Traces

What this means is that anything that is inserted into a structure from the lexicon cannot change from one level of representation to another. If a verb is put into a structure, nothing can delete or alter this verb, turning it into a noun, for example. Also no movement can alter a verb’s selectional properties: a transitive verb will remain transitive at D-structure and S-structure even if the object is moved.

3.2.3 Traces

Now consider the nature of the empty object in (92b): the extraction site of the moved object. By the Projection Principle, this object position must remain in the structure and cannot be deleted otherwise the transitive verb would find itself without an object and hence would be sitting in the structural position of an intransitive verb. As this would alter the lexical nature of the verb, we conclude that it would be impossible. Yet if this position were simply vacant, like the subject position is at D-structure, we might expect that it could be the landing site for some other moved element. This, it turns out, is not true at all. Consider the following analysis which indicates several movements step by step:

4.3 Multiple Determiners

This preposition has no meaning in these structures and it is fairly obvious that the semantic relationships hold between the noun and the following DPs. This can be most obviously seen from the fact that the verbs from which some of these nouns are formed are transitive and have no need of the preposition to express their relationship with the DP complement:

5.2.1 Unaccusative verbs

The position to which the subject moves is typically a nominative position and so we might assume that the movement has something to do with placing this argument in a Case position. The reason why these verbs are called ‘unaccusative’ is because unlike with transitive verbs, which share the possibility of having theme arguments, the theme of the unaccusative cannot normally remain inside the VP to receive accusative Case.

5.2.3 Ergative verbs

These verbs that have a transitive and an unaccusative use are sometimes called ergative verbs as the subject of the unaccusative version is interpreted the same as the object of the transitive version:

5.2.3 Ergative verbs

Languages which relate the subject of the intransitive verb with the object of a transitive verb in terms of a shared case form, for example, are called Ergative languages and while it is doubtful whether the phenomenon demonstrated in (44) has anything to do with the ergativity we find in languages like Basque or Eskimo languages such as Yupik, the term is a convenient one.

5.2.3.1 Potential problems

If we accept (45), a number of puzzles arise. First consider the alternation between the transitive and unaccusative uses of ergative verbs. Why does the subject go missing in this alternation and not the object and why does the object become the subject? A possible answer to the latter question is that the unaccusative verb is unable to assign Case and hence the object must move to subject position to satisfy the Case Filter:

5.2.3.3 Unaccusatives and ergatives

All of this demonstrates that ergative verbs can be analysed in exactly the same way as unaccusatives, in their ‘intransitive’ use, and as being part of a causative construction in their ‘transitive’ use. Indeed, ergative verbs themselves are identical to unaccusatives, even in causative constructions as it is the causative light verb which supplies the extra agent argument and the causative interpretation. For this reason, many linguists refer to these kinds of verbs as unaccusatives. However, it still remains that there are differences between the unaccusative verbs we reviewed above and the ergative verbs reviewed in this section. For a start, ergatives cannot appear in the there constructions and unaccusatives cannot appear in causative constructions:

5.2.4 Transitive verbs

5.2.8 Verbs with clausal complements

A class of verbs which are often traditionally lumped together with transitive verbs are verbs which have clausal complements:

5.2.8 Verbs with clausal complements

An obvious question to ask is where the clausal complement sits with respect to the verb. There are a number of possibilities. In some ways the clausal complement is rather like an object, which is what leads traditional grammars to conclude that these verbs are transitives. For instance, many of these verbs can appear with an object, sometimes with a similar meaning to the clausal complement:

5.2.8 Verbs with clausal complements

Moreover, some of these verbs can undergo passivisation, and as we have seen, in English, only the transitive verbs can passivise:

6.3 Movement to Spec IP

Let us start with the case of a simple transitive verb so that we can compare the situation of the subject and object: