# Hindi, Urdu: valency of khaanaa



## MonsieurGonzalito

Friends,

My general understanding was that, generally speaking, *HU tries to indicate verbal valency in a lexical way*, meaning that, just by hearing the verbal word, one has already an idea of how many complements that verb can have to complete its meaning, without resorting to the context.

     In English (and, to a lesser degree, in Spanish too), the opposite happens: many verbs can be used in such a way that they adopt different valencies (they might switch from intransitive to transitive)  according to the context.

"This train *stops *at every station" (_ruktii hai_, intransitive, valency 1)  ---   "This vest *stops *a bullet" (_roktaa hai_, transitive, valency 2) 


So, I assumed that this phenomenon of the same verbal form having many different valencies does not happen in HU.

But then (in the context of discussing if khaanaa always need a food object or not), a speaker came up with the following example:


littlepond said:


> Let's say A has dropped by B's home (they had planned to meet outside B's home), but B has not come outside, as planned. A honks his motorcycle's horn. B's wife comes out and could say either of the two:
> 
> voh khaanaa khaa rahe haiN
> voh khaa rahe haiN
> 
> Both are normal. In one, she specifies what her husband is eating (lunch or dinner). In the other, she simply says her husband is engaged in the activity of eating. (It is implied by B's wife in both the cases that that is why B has not yet appeared.)



So, my question is:
Does that mean that there *are *verbs in HU whose valency depends on the context, and cannot be expressed in a lexical way?

*Note:*
My guess (before hearing a knowledgeable opinion), is that the answer is no, that _khaanaa _is just a very special case, because speakers so strongly expect it to have a food object (in order to denote the specific meaning of "eating", given how many other acceptions this verb can have), that "_khaanaa khaanaa_" came to be perceived almost as a verbal phrase, and therefore "khaanaa" alone, just in this case, is seen as somewhat of a "different verb", allowing an exception to my imagined rule that "valency has to always be expressed lexically".

Thanks in advance for any answer or comment on this subject.


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## littlepond

MonsieurGonzalito said:


> So, my question is:
> Does that mean that there *are *verbs in HU whose valency depends on the context, and cannot be expressed in a lexical way?


The speaker has merely chosen to omit the object: it does not make the verb "khaanaa" as a non-object-taking verb.



MonsieurGonzalito said:


> *Note:*
> My guess (before hearing a knowledgeable opinion), is that the answer is no, that _khaanaa _is just a very special case, because speakers so strongly expect it to have a food object (in order to denote the specific meaning of "eating", given how many other acceptions this verb can have), that "_khaanaa khaanaa_" came to be perceived almost as a verbal phrase, and therefore "khaanaa" alone, just in this case, is seen as somewhat of a "different verb", allowing an exception to my imagined rule that "valency has to always be expressed lexically".



I think you don't understand the noun "khaanaa" properly, or so is the impression I'm getting. "khaanaa" (the noun) means a meal (lunch/dinner), it doesn't mean anything else (not even breakfast). So "khaanaa khaanaa" means one is having one's lunch/dinner. When "khaanaa" the noun is omitted, the speaker does not specify what a person is eating (though if it's around lunch or dinner time, the other party would assume that the eater is eating lunch/dinner). Such omission is a very idiomatic thing and happens in certain situations. Unless you are well versed in Hindi, I wouldn't recommend you to make such an omission.


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## MonsieurGonzalito

littlepond said:


> I think you don't understand the noun "khaanaa" properly, or so is the impression I'm getting. "khaanaa" (the noun) means a meal (lunch/dinner), it doesn't mean anything else (not even breakfast).


You are correct. I mistakenly thought that noun _khaanaa _was some sort of "filler", semi-redundant word meaning just "food" used to disambiguate the intransitive and transitive values of the verb _khaanaa_. Tnanks for spotting my problem.

I also understand your point that the omission of the object (at least in the example in question) seems to be some higly idiomatic niche thing allowable only by very competent speakers in the right situation, rather than some widespread phenomenon.

Still, "choosing to omit the object" is not such a light, inconsequential decision. It usually means (at least in English and Spanish) that the verb is being used in a completely different, intransitive way.

If I say: "This family always eats together" I am effectively using "to eat" intransitively, referring to the activity of eating in general, irrespective of what is ingested.

Are you saying that in (my attempt at the former example): _yah parivaar ek saath khaata hai
"khaana" _is still transitive? 

Or, putting _khaanaa _aside, because of its apparent idiomatic particularities, what really worries me is: 
Are there many other verbs in HU that can be interpreted both transitively and intransitively according to the context?

Because my impression is that HU generally goes to great lengths to prevent that from happening ...


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## littlepond

MonsieurGonzalito said:


> Are you saying that in (my attempt at the former example): _yah parivaar ek saath khaata hai
> "khaana" _is still transitive?



But then, the usual way is "yeh parivaar hameshaa ek saath khaanaa khaataa hai," as I don't think you mean that this family always eats a chocolate together, right?

Of course, as previously, one _can_, at certain times, choose to omit the noun "khaanaa" and simply say "yeh parivaat hameshaa ikaTThe khaataa hai."

I am not seeing any intransitive interpretation of "khaanaa" the verb, anyway, so I don't understand what you mean by the latter part of your post. Omitting an object does not mean that the object is not there: the two are different things. When one says "maiN gaa rahaa hooN," that's a true object-less sentence: it's not that I've just omitted "gaanaa" from "maiN gaanaa gaa rahaa hooN."

Hindi is a language that drops many things in a sentence to make the sentence "light"--the very subject is dropped ("kyaa bol rahii hai?" instead of "veh kyaa bol rahii hai?"--but that doesn't mean that the subject is not there in the sentence); English doesn't.


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## MonsieurGonzalito

littlepond said:


> But then, the usual way is "yeh parivaar hameshaa ek saath khaanaa khaataa hai," as I don't think you mean that this family always eats a chocolate together, right?





littlepond said:


> I am not seeing any intransitive interpretation of "khaanaa" the verb, anyway, so I don't understand what you mean by the latter part of your post.


I am saying that the family in question simply performs the act of eating jointly  (the exact meals of the day or substances ingested being irrelevant, we could be speaking about a family of omnivorous bears).

From your answers in which you try either:
- always use a direct object, or 
- portray that usage in the motorcycle example as an oddity, or 
- assume that a verb is "per se" transitive or intransirive, and 
- when we don't use an object with a (potentially) transitive verb, assue that it is simply for speed or as a stylistic choice

... I infer that dual intransitive/transitive meanings of the same verb according to the context (the way the verb "to stop" behaves in the OP), is not really a thing in HU. 

Unfortunately,  since I don't have enough knowledge of the language,  I can only talk ask about this phenomenon (or lack thereof) in a general, hypothetical way.  
(It is also hard to speak in concrete about something that one thinks *doesn't* exist ).


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## littlepond

MonsieurGonzalito said:


> ... I infer that dual intransitive/transitive meanings of the same verb according to the context (the way the verb "to stop" behaves in the OP), is not really a thing in HU.



How is it possible when for any verb, a different form exists when a different "valency" is meant? It may be there in a very few idiomatic usages (hard to think of any for the moment), but the phenomenon is excluded from the very way Hindi vocabulary is built.

To take an example, imagine if there were some verb such as "bhurraanaa." One would automatically say "bhurrnaa" as the intransitive form of the verb and "bhurrvaanaa" as the causative form.


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## Pokeflute

MonsieurGonzalito said:


> So, my question is:
> Does that mean that there *are *verbs in HU whose valency depends on the context, and cannot be expressed in a lexical way?



If you're asking for verbs in Hindi/Urdu that are both intransitive and transitive, there are several: samajhnaa (to understand), badalnaa (to change), talnaa (to fry), and lehraanaa (to wave) come to mind, but there are plenty more.

My understanding is that, even then, there is pressure to disambiguate which of these meanings is intended (usually through a compound verb). For example "my life changed" would usually be "merii zindagii badal gayii".

These aren't iron-clad rules, but my understanding is in these instances "jaanaa" loses its meaning and instead is an explicit marker of intransitivity.


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## MonsieurGonzalito

Pokeflute said:


> talnaa (to fry),


I get your general point that the lexicalization is not perfect.

But _talaanaa _exists right? As in:

_samose talaane ke lie tel ?_


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## littlepond

MonsieurGonzalito said:


> But _talaanaa _exists right? As in:
> 
> _samose talaane ke lie tel ?_



There is no "talaanaa" (sounds horrible)! It's "samose talne ke lie tel" (the oil to "tal" samosas).

If you are getting a third party to do it for you, then there's "talvaanaa."


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## MonsieurGonzalito

OK, but then, not to belabor on the subject ...
Does a "valency 1, totally intransitive" usage of _talnaa _really exist?

How do I say that, for example, potatoes normally "fry", get to a state of "fryness" at 80 degrees?
If the answer is something like:

_aaluu 80 Digrii par tale jaae_

... then _talnaa _is no different from any other *transitive* (and only transitive) verb, that can be passivated.

What would be an example of an intransitive usage of _talnaa_?

[EDIT] same for them "becoming fried" _tale ban jaae_, _tale hue_, etc. They don't count (if they are possible), as any transitive verb can be applied to these constructions.


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## littlepond

MonsieurGonzalito said:


> OK, but then, not to belabor on the subject ...
> Does a "valency 1, totally intransitive" usage of _talnaa _really exist?


In my mind, "talnaa" is only transitive.



MonsieurGonzalito said:


> "becoming fried" _tale ban jaae_



"tale ban jaae"? What's that? No such expression can exist!


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## MonsieurGonzalito

Pokeflute said:


> *samajhnaa *(to understand), *badalnaa *(to change), talnaa (to fry), and *lehraanaa *(to wave) come to mind, but there are plenty more.


_badalnaa_, I can imagine scenarios in which it could be intransitive, like in: _ log badalte haiN

lehraanaa  _can clearly be both transitive and intransitive ("wave somehing" versus "flare, undulate")

But _samajhnaa_? I see in dictionaries that it says "transitive and intransitive", but none of the examples in the dictionaries convince me as really intransitive.
What would be an example of _samajhnaa _being used intransitively (as opposed to simply omitting an implied object)?

Even if I say: 
_ab maiN samjhaa _ 

it seems clear to me that there is something implied there, even if I am not obliged to say what.


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## MonsieurGonzalito

For what it's worth: 

I queried a dababase of that I keep of verbs in Platts (or entries in that dictionary that I can unequivocally parse as verbs) and they number 2095 entries. 

Then, I retrieved the subset of them that contain the strings 'v.n.' and 'v.t.' at the same time (meaning that they have both transitive and intransitive acceptions). That gives 145 entries, or about 7% of the total number of verbs.

That means tha HU does not *perfectly *or *thoroughly *lexicalize the difference between intransitive and transtive verbs (as I suspected originally), but that it is *remarkably effective *in doing it. 

Sorry, I should have thought about making those queries before starting this thread.


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## aevynn

MonsieurGonzalito said:


> Does a "valency 1, totally intransitive" usage of _talnaa _really exist?





littlepond said:


> In my mind, "talnaa" is only transitive.


Intransitive _talnaa_ --- samose tal ga'e. 
Passive of transitive _talnaa_ --- samose tale ga'e.


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## MonsieurGonzalito

aevynn said:


> Intransitive _talnaa_ --- samose tal ga'e.
> Passive of transitive _talnaa_ --- samose tale ga'e.


 (there is no "head exploding" icon)

Would you care to elaborte on the grammar of this?
I get the idea that_ "tale gae"_  probably stresses that someone fried them.

But the only "real verb" there is #1 _tal jaana_, right?
_#2 tale gae_ is ... what?


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## aevynn

I'm always happy to elaborate on grammar, but I'm not sure exactly what to elaborate on. Perhaps this: It might help to recognize that jaanaa serves (at least) two syntactically very distinct functions as an auxiliary verb. When it is compounded with a verb stem (ie, the infinitive minus the -naa), it functions as a "light verb." This is what's happening in tal ga'e:
​tal = stem of (the intransitive) talnaa​ga'e = masculine plural perfective participle of the light verb jaanaa​​This is syntactically the same jaanaa that appears in "kaam puuraa ho gayaa." On the other hand, when jaanaa is compounded with a perfective participle, one obtains passive voice. This is what's happening in tale ga'e:
​tale = masculine plural perfective participle of (the transitive) talnaa​ga'e = masculine plural perfective participle of the passivizing auxiliary jaanaa​
This is syntactically the same jaanaa that appears in "kaam puuraa kiyaa gayaa." We discussed this briefly here as well (posts #7-8).

Feel free to ask a follow up question if that's not what you were asking about


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## MonsieurGonzalito

OK, I am triply confused:

1.  


aevynn said:


> stem of (the intransitive) talnaa


I thought that we established that _talnaa _was not intransitive

2. when a "light verb" conveys the idea of a "change of state", that idea is usually intransitive. But then, it is the grammatical device (i.e. applying the "light-verbization") what turns the verb into intransitive, not the verb being itself intrinsecally intransitive.

In other words, _talnaa _is *still transitive*, even though, expressing it in certain ways (for example, as a light verb), we may convey an idea of intransitivity, as with *any other transitive verb*.  Am I right?

3.
It is lost to me why the passive voice is relevant in this discussion. Expressing something in passive voice precludes any other object. So I am not sure of its value in terms of judging transitivity or intransitivity or the original verb.


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## aevynn

Let me address these questions out of order:



MonsieurGonzalito said:


> 2. when a "light verb" conveys the idea of a "change of state", that idea is usually intransitive. But then, it is the grammatical device (i.e. applying the "light-verbization") what turns the verb into intransitive, not the verb being itself intrinsecally intransitive.
> 
> In other words, _talnaa _is *still transitive*, even though, expressing it in certain ways (for example, as a light verb), we may convey an idea of intransitivity, as with *any other transitive verb*. Am I right?


No, compounding with the light verb _jaanaa_ does not make verbs intransitive. For example, _karnaa_ is transitive and the compounded _kar jaanaa_ is still transitive: for example, one has _wo(h) saaraa kaam kar gayaa_ = He did all of the work (with _saaraa kaam_ being the direct object). Alternatively, one has _wo(h) merii miThaa'iyaaN khaa gayaa_ = He finished off my sweets (with _merii miThaa'iyaaN_ being the direct object). Intransitives remain intransitive when compounded with the light verb _jaanaa_, while transitives remain transitive [^1].



MonsieurGonzalito said:


> 1. I thought that we established that _talnaa _was not intransitive


I slightly disagree with @littlepond jii's assessment about intransitive _talnaa_. I think there is an intransitive _talnaa_. It's true that intransitive _talnaa_ is frequently compounded with the light verb _jaanaa_ (ie, occurs as part of the compound _tal jaanaa_), which is probably what @littlepond jii was getting at in #11. But I think _talnaa_ should nonetheless be analyzed as an intransitive verb when it occurs in this compound --- because, as I noted above, compounding with the light verb _jaanaa_ does not in general change the (in)transitivity of a verb.



MonsieurGonzalito said:


> 3. It is lost to me why the passive voice is relevant in this discussion. Expressing something in passive voice precludes any other object. So I am not sure of its value in terms of judging transitivity or intransitivity or the original verb.


There is an important relationship between transitivity and the semantics (or even the meaningfulness!) of passivization (cf. our discussion here), but that's not really what I was pointing out with my example in #14 above. All I wanted to point out was two phonetically similar-ish constructions which are syntactically very different, since one exhibits an intransitive _talnaa_ (compounded with the light verb _jaanaa_) while the other exhibits a transitive _talnaa_ (compounded with the passivizing auxiliary _jaanaa_).

----
[^1]: While transitives remain transitive upon compounding with the light verb _jaanaa_, note that these compounds no longer display ergative-absolutive alignment in the perfective aspect (eg, one has _wo(h) saaraa kaam kar gayaa_ as opposed to *_us_ne saaraa kaam kar gayaa_).


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## littlepond

aevynn said:


> Intransitive _talnaa_ --- samose tal ga'e.
> Passive of transitive _talnaa_ --- samose tale ga'e.



Agree! Had not thought of such quite-common usage of "talnaa": indeed both transitive and intransitive.


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## aevynn

If you like, @MonsieurGonzalito jii, here is another syntactically unambiguous example of intransitive talnaa (without any complications involving compounding with jaanaa): 

samose abhii tal_ke nikle haiN, garam hoN_ge. 
The samosas just finished frying (lit. "just fried and came out [of the hot oil]"), so they'll be very hot.


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## MonsieurGonzalito

Well, a quick Internet search shows me that "ke nikle" can be applied to pretty much anything, including clearly transitive verbs:

_hai hamne aapke lie *chun chun* ke nikle hai
sadaa paan* khaa khaa* ke nikle hai baahar
sab kuchh sab kuchh *paRh *ke nikle hai_

And the above examples, if my guess is correct, would be translated using some sort of passive circumlocution "just been selected, just been eaten, etc". 

So what prevents me from interpreting that the samosas have "just been fried" (by someone, which in active form would convey a transitive idea)?


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## aevynn

TLDR: The crucial syntactic point I think you might be missing is that the agent of the matrix verb controls the agent of the __kar/_ke_ conjunctive.

Details:


MonsieurGonzalito said:


> _hai hamne aapke lie *chun chun* ke nikle hai
> sadaa paan* khaa khaa* ke nikle hai baahar
> sab kuchh sab kuchh *paRh *ke nikle hai_
> 
> And the above examples, if my guess is correct, would be translated using some sort of passive circumlocution "just been selected, just been eaten, etc".


No. I don't know exactly what translations you're intending, but I think your guess is incorrect. I have no idea how to parse your first sentence without more context (the blurb you've transcribed doesn't sound like a grammatically coherent whole to me), so let me just pass that one over and start instead with an analysis of the third: If one says _sab kuchh paRh_ke nikle haiN_, the agents of the two verbs _paRh_ke_ and _nikle haiN_ must match. _sab kuchh_ is grammatically singular while _nikle haiN_ is grammatically plural, so _sab kuchh_ cannot be the agent of _nikle haiN_, and thus also cannot be the agent of _paRh_ke_. One must posit a tacit _ham_ (or something similar) as the common agent of the two verbs, and _sab kuchh_ must be parsed as the direct object of _paRh_ke_. Thus, _sab kuchh paRh_ke nikle haiN_ is forced to mean something like "[We] left after studying everything" (for purely syntactic considerations).

For the second, if one says _paan khaa_ke nikle haiN_, again the agent of _nikle haiN_ must match the agent of _khaa_ke_. I guess _paan_ could be treated as a morphologically plural (in the direct case), but if one treats it as the agent of _nikle haiN_, one must also treat it as the agent of _khaa_ke_, which is semantic nonsense: _paan_ is inanimate and cannot eat anything! Thus, again, _paan_ cannot be the common agent of the two verbs, one must posit a tacit _ham_ (or something similar) as the common agent of the two verbs, and _paan_ must be the direct object of _khaa_ke_. In other words, _paan khaa_ke nikle haiN_ is forced to mean "[We] left after eating _paan_" (for a mixture of syntactic and semantic considerations[^2]).

Now with the sentence _samose abhii tal_ke nikle haiN_, as soon as one decides _samose_ is the agent of _nikle haiN_, there is no longer any ambiguity: then _samose_ must also be the agent of _tal_ke_, and since _samose_ are inanimate and cannot transitive-fry anything, this must be an intransitive _talnaa_.

That being said, doing this analysis carefully, I now notice that there was a choice in the syntactic parse (see above when I said "as soon as one decides _samose_ is the agent of _nikle haiN_"). One could, I suppose, instead assume a tacit agent to be the common agent of the two verbs, but if one does, the meaning is forced to be completely different from the meaning I gave in #20 --- and the _garam hoN_ge_ becomes a complete non sequitur. In other words, one could theoretically[^1] have a sentence like:
​[xaansaamaa] samose abhii tal_ke nikle haiN.​[The chef] just left [the kitchen?] after frying samosas.​
But then if you attach a _garam hoN_ge_ to this sentence, it sounds like you're saying that the _xaansaamaa_ must be hot, which is semantically ridiculous.

---
Footnotes:
[^1]: Realistically, I have trouble imagining someone actually dropping the subject in a sentence like this, but maybe there's nothing wrong with it...
[^2]: If the sentence was instead _ghoRe khaa_ke nikle haiN_, now the noun _ghoRe_ can both syntactically and semantically function as the agent of both _khaa_ke_ and _nikle haiN_. This sentence would most probably mean something like "The horses left after eating." I suppose it theoretically could also mean "[We] left after eating horses," but this sounds quite unlikely since horses aren't usually eaten...


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## littlepond

^ What a wonderful, neat, comprehensive explanation and clear thinking, @aevynn jii, in post 22. (I haven't been able to dissuade @MonsieurGonzalito jii from his crazy grammatical thinkings in the past, as I was not capable of writing such lucid posts.) If there were a love button like those on social media, I'd have had to love your post!


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## marrish

aevynn said:


> [xaansaamaa] samose abhii tal_ke nikle haiN.


xaansaamaaN


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## MonsieurGonzalito

Actually yes, my examples suck.

#1 [chun chun ke]  looks like a keyword-tacthing mostly nonsensical auto-generated text
Bhumit Patel – Medium

#2 [paan khaa khaa]  is a poem, which I believe is using "to go out" literally:
Mushafi Ghulam Hamdani - Sher

#3 [_sab kuchh sab kuchh_] Is the tilte of one of the songs in an obscure 1949 film
Hindi Film Songs - Ghar Ki Numaish (1949) | MySwar
Which is probably not even in Hindi

I am sorry, I should bring up more reputable examples.

BTW, I understand the point about the agreement of verbs, thanks @aevynn!




littlepond said:


> I haven't been able to dissuade @MonsieurGonzalito jii from his crazy grammatical thinkings in the past,


But you have to admit, I am adding years to your life, @littlepond -ji


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## littlepond

MonsieurGonzalito said:


> But you have to admit, I am adding years to your life, @littlepond -ji



Indeed, I mostly enjoy it, @MonsieurGonzalito jii!


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