Intransitives

In linguistics, an intransitive verb is a verb that does not take a direct object. The core argument of an intransitive sentence is the subject, and the action or state denoted by the verb is typically described as occurring to or by the subject alone. Intransitives may still include other complements such as prepositional phrases, adjuncts, or oblique arguments, but they do not assign a direct-object role to any noun phrase.

English examples include sleep, die, arrive, go, laugh, and swim. Thus one can say She slept, The bird arrived, or They laughed. In many cases the verb can take a circumstantial complement (He swam across the lake) or a directional PP, but there is no direct object.

Some verbs are ambitransitive, capable of both transitive and intransitive use without morphological change. For example, run can mean 'to run a business' (transitive) or 'to run every morning' (intransitive). Other verbs participate in patterns such as eat, which may be intransitive in contexts like 'He eats slowly' but transitive as in 'He eats an apple.'

In linguistic theory, intransitives are discussed in relation to valency, and they are sometimes categorized as unergative (agent-like activities) or unaccusative (involving changes of state or location). In languages with ergative alignment, the subject of an intransitive sentence is treated differently from the agent of a transitive sentence, which helps distinguish transitive and intransitive constructions.

Overall, intransitives form a basic and productive area of study in syntax and semantics, illustrating how verbs interact with the number and type of arguments they require.