# Trans. and intrans. (causative) verbs



## ThomasK

I noticed that some (quite some ?) verbs connected with movement have both a transitive and an intransitive form, often a causative form, though the latter may differ from the simple transitive form. 

1. Is it the case in lots of languages? _(I suppose I recognize the phenomenon in Dutch, French, English, German, to some extent)_

2. Is the transitive form always the causative form, or what form is it in the other cases ? 

3. Could I find lists of those verbs in other languages? (I found a list of verbs and their causative counterparts in Dutch at this website)


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## JuanEscritor

Would you be willing to provide some examples of the verbs you believe to be involved in this?

JE


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## francisgranada

I don't know if have uderstood the question exactly, but I can give you some examples from Hungarian, where I can't see any connection with movement or transitivity, causative forms can be created practically from all the verbs. To be precise, in Hungarian these verbs are called _factitative _verbs. 

enni - to eat
et*et*ni - "to make sombody eat", to feed ...

futni - to run
futt*at*ni - "to make/cause sombody/something  to run", to run (e.g. a program) ...

szülni - to bear, to give birth
szül*et*ni -"to make sb. to bear", to be born 

írni - to write
ir*at*ni - "to make sombody to write"

ülni - to sit
ült*et*ni - "to make sombody sit", to seat, to set, to plant ...


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## ThomasK

You're right, I thought those were mainly verbs of movement, but the verbs you mention remind me of some movement as well. Don't you think? 

I had thought of 
- _rollen, rollen_ (to roll)
-_ breken, breken_ (to break)
- maybe: _raken _(to get + adj.), _raken_ (to touch) --- not so sure though

A little different but... : 
- roeren (to move, old),  _beroeren_ (touch)
> *there are a lot of these be-V*, but they mainly combine with prep.-obj. verbs (spelen op/ bespelen, luisteren naar/beluisteren)

The most interesting ones might be the ones where transitive and intransitive have the same form - but they seem to be causative as well. I guess the causative infix or ablaut is found in a lot of languages, but not sure whether there are a lot of languages where a verb can be trans. and intransitive... (Thanks)


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## sakvaka

Movement verbs? Here are some in Finnish.

liikkua, liikuttaa = move (_intr._), move (_tr._)
siirtyä, siirtää = move away (_intr._), move away (_tr._)
juosta, juoksuttaa = run, make run
kulkea, kuljettaa = go, move; carry, transport
poistua, poistaa = leave (_a place_), remove
syntyä, synnyttää = be born, give a birth to

-(t)U = passive verb / reflexive verb
-UttA = causative verb / curative verb (maybe in _juoksuttaa_?)
-t(t)A = causative verb

Different meanings:

tuoda, tuottaa = bring, yield
mennä, menettää = go, lose

Should we try to clear up the terminology a bit?

*causative *= to cause something that the root indicates (usually deverbal)
*curative *= to make sy do sth, to have sth done by sy
*factive *= to make sth more similar to the root (usually denominal)
*reflexive *= to make something to oneself
*passive *= something happens to the subject

Source.


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## ThomasK

Great information, Sakvaka, though my Finnish will not do to decipher your source. I'll need to go into the precise meaning of the words, I am afraid, but certainly interesting distinctions. I suppose they are common in Finnish. I have never seen "curative" in a linguistic context, but it is intriguing, for sure. 

As for 


> tuoda, tuottaa = bring, yield
> mennä, menettää = go, lose


 
Could we not explain those as "to let go", not to "make go"? I do not know whether that has a name. _(Shall we introduce the "laxative" - or is that something different ?)_


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## ThomasK

Five years later, I try again, but starting from new examples, which are semantically related, I think. Main question: do you think those are categories that are applicable to other topics as well? And do you agree with the names, or do you have other suggestions? 

 With seeing: -
 - *lijken/ schijnen* [seem - etymo: light], eruit zien (to look like (Dutch: see))  --- all *impersonal *verbs [is 'passive' a good name here, as Sakvaka suggested? French can use reflexives here: _la question se pose_]
*- inzien (realize), ontwaren, begrijpen* (understand) [= come to see])     [personal, *inchoative *aspect ?]     
 - *zien* (kijken naar) [seeing as such - *active*? Agentive ???] 
 - *tonen* (show, related with 'teach' etymologically somehow)  [= to cause to/ make see - causative] 
 I could imagine some similar series with knowing but I am not so sure about the impersonal forms (it is clear), and whether it is not basically the same as seeing (_videre _= _weten _in Dutch, _wit _in English, _wissen _in German)... I cannot imagine other series like this really... 

 Or working: _(Don't think so)_
 - function/ work
 - ... ? [get going/... ]
 - operating
 - ... ? [force to ... - but that is not a causative working verb]


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## Peterdg

Thomas,

I read your original question, I read the answers you got so far and I read your recent post, and I still have no idea whatsoever what you are talking about, and I'm afraid I will not be the only one.

In your post #1, you are talking of verbs connected with movement. Where is the movement in lijken, schijnen, inzien, zien, tonen?

What has happened to the transitive/intransitive? Where does the impersonal come into play?

Honestly, I have no clue what you want to know.


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## ThomasK

Well, I do admit that I had started out from too narrow a viewpoint focusing on transitivity and movement, but you will have to admit ;-) that my new examples and some of the answers give a better idea. For example: causative form is necessarily linked to transitivity, impersonal verbs are intransitive, to start with. Next: I am trying to find [semantic]
 categories of verbs all based on one semantic concept, as I have - fairly clearly, I think - illustrated in the previous post. My interest is: would it not be interesting to be able to present those verbs in that way to particular learners? 

The whole question is: 
- are those four categories in #7 standard categories? Are there more (like curative in  Finnish ?)? EXTRA: can such series be found in lexicons, thesauri? 
- can you find those categories in other semantic contexts apart from movement? I think my additions regarding 'visuality' are just extra illustrations in a new context. 
Basically I could also ask: do you recognize the coherence in my examples in #7 and do those categories correspond with internationally recognized terms (which could help me find more examples)?

One more context: evolution of numbers, situations... 
- rising/ decreasing
- triggering the in-/ decrease ? - Cannot find a verb
- reduce/ increase (transitive)
- have someone else reduce something - no specific verb, I think... 
But I am afraid this context does not allow for categories like those with seeing/ looking; those  are different realities, I suppose.


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## Hulalessar

I think that the problem here is taking the forms of one language and trying to find categories in another which correspond to them when the language lacks the forms.  I concentrate on English because it is the language I know most about.  There was a time when English was described in terms of Latin grammar. Linguists (especially when it was realised that that had resulted in Latin grammar being imposed on English grammar) stepped back and announced that English needed to be described in its own terms. They perhaps stepped back too far and threw the baby out with the bath water because, up to a point, Latin is not that bad a model compared to, say, Swahili. What seems to have happened is that English is now being described in the terms of every language which has been studied. One can almost imagine a linguist looking at Basque and saying: "Ergativity! Yummy! We'll have some of that!" We now have medio-passive, ambitransitive verbs not to mention ergativity. Without suggesting that analytical languages are more mysterious and therefore in some ways less mechanical than synthetic languages, I think that that is to impose on English categories which it does not really have or which at best are very loose categories not easily defined. Of course it is not the case that in synthetic languages form and function always correspond exactly, but I do think it is the case that analytical languages are less susceptible to rigorous analysis.  Whatever vestiges of it there may be, in modern English "causative" is not a productive grammatical category. Describing a verb as causative does not really tell us anything about it that we do not know from its sense or anything about its form. English has a very high tolerance of intransitive verbs. Whilst we can say "the window closed" many languages need to say "the window closed itself". Such a construction strikes a native English speaker as odd as it seems to imply that the window was acting under its own volition. On the other hand to, say, a native French speaker "the window closed" prompts him to wonder what it was the window closed and also suggests that the window had some power of closing things.  It can also be noted that some verbs have the odd property that their subject when intransitive can be their object when transitive without a change in meaning. In both "The rise in temperature melted the ice" and "The ice melted" what we learn is that the ice turned to water. However, the sense of "melt" does not allow us to say "The rise in temperature melted" or "The ice melted [something]". The phenomenon is interesting, but does it merit being considered a grammatical category rather than just being given a name to describe it?


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## Hulalessar

Sorry about the dense appearance of my last post, but once again I seem to be unable to make my posts appear in paragraphs.


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## ThomasK

I see your point, I think: one cannot really impose/use those categories in analytical languages. As for causatives, there are some fossils (_fall/fell, lie/lay_, etc.) but I quite agree: those are not/ no longer productive. Thanks for that consideration. 

My motive for asking is that I think presenting these different kinds of verbs (and forms?) together is interesting for the learner because they belong together. I mean: I taught about decreasing and increasing at first (useful for describing graphs), but now I add the - errr... - causative [lexical] forms: reducing and increasing. Helping students to make their own causative forms using 'making' (or in Dutch 'ver'-ADJ-'en') seems also quite interesting to me. 
So I realize afterwards that I had not been thinking grammatically really but lexically: how can I present verbs, semantically related verbs in particular, and what would be the most plausible categories? I think causative as such but lexical (like 'stand' and 'put', _staan _and _zetten, _the latter some kind of causative pendant of the other one). Just this morning I  overheard someone creating a new verb based on _indignant _in Dutch, something like "indignanting" - simply because this causative concept is so useful... But I understand what you mean: I cannot call these grammatical categories. I hope though that I can call them 'semantic causatives'. _(Thanks for helping me realise this...)_


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## Hulalessar

I am inclined to think that if your purpose is didactic you need to proceed with caution. You may end up telling students more than they want to know! Sometimes explanations are useful and sometimes they are not. More important is that language students learn to accept that things are as they are. If you want to say "the door closed" in French you have to say "la porte s'est fermée" and not "la porte a fermé".


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## ThomasK

I think I understand and agree. The main thing, I thought, was a way of presenting kinds of verbs, but maybe I should not be using those grammatical terms... I now think that these categories have helped me to realize (and present) different ways of talking about reality and thus show them the possibilities that Dutch offers for that purpose, but I do not need to use those terms for that...


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## Hulalessar

ThomasK said:


> I now think that these categories have helped me to realize (and present) different ways of talking about reality and thus show them the possibilities that Dutch offers for that purpose, but I do not need to use those terms for that...



I think that that is important. Teachers need to have an in depth understanding as it helps them to explain the simple things clearly. Understanding of one's own language can be enhanced by studying linguistics and other languages and the more unlike one's own language the better. One comes to realise that what one thinks of as ordinary may be unusual or unique and that there are many different ways of talking about the world.


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## ThomasK

But I do think there are universals in language as well, but then that refers to semantics more. The concept of 'red' almost implies 'making red', don't you think?


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## Hulalessar

ThomasK said:


> But I do think there are universals in language as well, but then that refers to semantics more. The concept of 'red' almost implies 'making red', don't you think?



We have to decide what we mean by universals and whether we are starting to get into whether there is such a things as universal grammar. Keeping to semantics and without getting too philosophical and trying to keep it practical, every language involves classification. The number of phenomena is infinite but there has to be a limit to classification. Not all languages classify phenomena in the same way or even consistently.

Take colours. In English we have the word _pink _for the shade somewhere between white and red; its use is such that in English you never hear "light red". By contrast there is no equivalent word for light green or any of the other basic colours. That is an iconistency that has no "logical" explanation. In fact English managed perfectly without the word pink for a long time. Languages also differ in how they divide up the colour spectrum. In Spanish for example you cannot say something is brown without saying whether it is light brown or dark brown.

Colours are straightforward. Whilst classification can be expected to be based on some observable or perceived quality which things have in common, the classification may not be "scientific". It is perfectly possible to imagine that a language has an everyday word for "thing with wings" which would include birds, bats and butterflies but would not be considered a scientific label. One language may use one word to describe what in another language is considered two or more separate concepts. An amusing example: an ítem of clothing I have with the washing instructions in English and Spanish tells me that the ítem should be ironed "upside down"! The mistranslation arose because Spanish, unlike English, does not regularly distinguish between "upside down", "inside out" and "back to front".

This all leads to the interesting question of whether and to what extent thought is limited by language. Clearly a Spanish speaker must be able to grasp that there is a difference between something being upside down and back to front, just as an English speaker can perceive the difference between dark and light brown. But it is not all as simple as that. In the end you just have to ask about a language you are learning what you can and must do. To ask why gets you nowhere.


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## ThomasK

Thanks a lot for this comment, and I apologize for not replying sooner. 

I just thought : 
(1) Indeed, we need classification, and a limited number of categories indeed, but which. No source I know is able to present them all. Grammars can, to some extent, but semantic categories? I have just read about "lexique-grammaire" and I wish to explore that because I think there are links, but still... Roget's Thesaurus is certainly valuable, but very theoretical (my angle is linguistic-didactic, so...). 
(2) I am not sure why you say that colours are straightforward. Somehow most people can see and name red, or isn't that what you mean? I know that some languages distinguish (separate) colours differently... 
What I meant myself was that I think most people can 
- DESCRIBE something as red, with various degrees of certainty [I_t is red, it looks red, it seems to be red]_,
 and that a lot of languages will have verbs for describing 
- BECOMING red (_to redden _?) 
- MAKING things red (to _paint, colour red, to redden, ...)_


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## luitzen

I think that this kind of categorization is very interesting and, in case of the study of a language and its origins, also very useful, but for teaching a language less so.

When I first looked at this topic, I was thinking about stative verbs (see also: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stative_verb ). From an historic perspective, they seem to be a quite useful category for Germanic languages. Stative verbs also seem to be the origin of the Germanic suffix _-de_ indicating the past tense, but I do not yet fully understand why.


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## berndf

luitzen said:


> Stative verbs also seem to be the origin of the Germanic suffix _-de_ indicating the past tense, but I do not yet fully understand why.


No. The weak preterite suffix is a left over of a originally periphrastic form, i.e. _he loved her_ originally meant _he love-did her_. The basic rule is that strong verbs are inherited from PIE and weak verbs are Germanic innovation. In modern Germanic languages, some verbs have changed their patterns which obscures this rule a bit.

You sometimes find verbs that vary the past tense depending on usage. Often intransitive uses are strong and transitive uses are weak, e.g. in German _Das Bild hing and der Wand_ but _Er hängte das Bild an die Wand_. This is so because the transitive use is a derived causative (and hence an innovation): _*hangijanaN _from _*hanhanaN_. The morphological difference in the infinitive and present forms is now lost (the modern _hängen _is derived from the causative) but the origin remains visible in the past tense.


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## luitzen

Maybe I did not express myself clearly, but from my understanding the _-de_ suffix is derived from a stative version of the dynamic verb _do_ (or whatever this may have been in proto-Germanic).


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## berndf

luitzen said:


> Maybe I did not express myself clearly, but from my understanding the _-de_ suffix is derived from a stative version of the dynamic verb _do_ (or whatever this may have been in proto-Germanic).


Yes, you expressed yourself clearly. I just said this was wrong. The endings _-de, -te, -ed_, etc. are derived from the preterite of the verb *_dōnaN_ (i.e. from the stem _ded-_) and there is nothing stative about it.


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## luitzen

Ok, I see. Thanks for your answer.


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## J.F. de TROYES

ThomasK said:


> I noticed that some (quite some ?) verbs connected with movement have both a transitive and an intransitive form, often a causative form, though the latter may differ from the simple transitive form.
> 
> 1. Is it the case in lots of languages? _(I suppose I recognize the phenomenon in Dutch, French, English, German, to some extent)_
> 
> 2. Is the transitive form always the causative form, or what form is it in the other cases ?
> 
> 3. Could I find lists of those verbs in other languages? (I found a list of verbs and their causative counterparts in Dutch at this website)



In French some verbs expressing movement can be used transitively as _monter_ ( to go /come up ) , _descendre_ ( to go/come down ) ,_ entrer_ (to go / to  come in ) , _sortir _(to go/ to come out) . They can also be followed by an object.  The causative form uses the semi-auxiliary _faire _and its meaning  sometimes tends to merge with the verb used transitively : in a sentence like _J'ai fait entrer la table par la fenêtre_ ( I've got the table inside through the window ) can be understood as someone else has got it inside , but also I've got it myself inside . But with _monter_ and _sortir _using transitivity or the factitive construction clearly conveys two meanings. I think further research should be carried out to clear out to what extent such examples are significant.


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## ThomasK

berndf said:


> This is so because the transitive use is a derived causative (and hence an innovation): _*hangijanaN _from _*hanhanaN_. The morphological difference in the infinitive and present forms is now lost (the modern _hängen _is derived from the causative) but the origin remains visible in the past tense.


As for what came first (caus. of non-causa): I am not sure I can follow, I am sorry. T

I am inclined to think there are two possibilities: 
- with regard to _breken/ brechen/ break_: what came first (as for the meaning)? The causative or the non-causative? Can I conclude from your notes that here the causative meaning is the original one? 
- but in general, when referring to duos (like _fall/ fell, lie/lay_) I thought the causative forms were based on the stative (...) form. I think that is what you suggest when referring to 


> _*hang*ij*anaN _from _*hanhanaN_


 The _ij_ is the extra causative ending accounting for the change of vowel in _fell _(palatalisation) - but not in lay, I think. it is not the other way round, is it? 

On the other hand, I think the name 'causative' implies that there is an action that you one can make happen... So causative seems like a secondary category based on another one...

The French verbs are interesting: from _monter _to _monter l'escalier _reminds me of things such as _vallen _(fall, tomber) leading to _aanvallen _(transitive: attack), where the semantic link seems a little obscure at first sight...


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## berndf

ThomasK said:


> As for what came first (caus. of non-causa): I am not sure I can follow, I am sorry.


Isn't the expression "derived causative" sufficiently unambiguous?


ThomasK said:


> but not in lay, I think. it is not the other way round, is it?


_-j-_ in the infinitive and present stems is typical for derived causatives but not unique to them. The reconstructed stative is _*ligjanaN_ and the reconstructed causative _*lagjanaN_ producing _lie_ (EN), _liegen_ (DE), _liggen_ (NL) and _lay_ (EN), _legen_ (GE), _leggen_ (NL). In the causative you see the typical i-mutation (=umlauting) _a>e _(the English spelling with a is modern) but not in the base form (there is no _i_-umlaut, or probably better: _i_ is identical with its umlaut). The strongest indication that _lie, liegen, liggen_ is the older verb is that fact that it is strong while the _lay, legen, leggen_ is weak.


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## ThomasK

berndf said:


> Isn't the expression "derived causative" sufficiently unambiguous?.


Well, somehow I got mixed up or I was wondering : the causative is derived - but from the other verb, of course,  and somehow that was where I got mixed up. (But indeed 'afgeleide causatief' in Dutch)


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