Intransitivt

Intransitivt, or intransitive, is a grammatical category used to describe verbs that do not require a direct object to complete their meaning. An intransitive verb typically has one core argument (the subject) and may take other modifiers or adjuncts, but it does not take a direct object. The opposite category is transitivt, or transitive, which includes verbs that require a direct object to receive the action.

Examples in English illustrate the distinction. Intransitive: The cat sleeps. The sun rises. She arrived. Transitive: She reads a book. He kicked the ball. Some verbs can be used in both ways, depending on context: eat can be intransitive as in I eat, or transitive as in I eat an apple.

Valency, or the number of arguments a verb requires, underpins the distinction. Intransitive verbs have a valency of one (the subject). Some languages further distinguish unaccusative and unergative intransitives, reflecting how the subject relates to the action or state. Other verbs may appear in intransitive form in one sense in one language and transitive in another, as with many verbs that can take objects in some constructions but not in others.

In Swedish and other Germanic languages, the term intransitivt is used similarly to describe verbs that do not take a direct object. Linguists may also analyze how intransitive verbs interact with adpositions, case marking, or verb morphology in a given language.

Overall, intransitivt is a fundamental concept for understanding how languages allocate arguments to verbs and how sentence structure is built around whether an action has a direct object or not.