Transitivity

Transitivity is a category that indicates the number of objects a verb requires or takes in a given instance.

Natural language

In the UNLarium framework, transitivity may assume the following values:

objects

Examples

• English
  • unergative (NERG) = run (John ran)
  • unaccusative (NACC) = fall (John fell)
  • direct monotransitive (TST) = kiss (John kissed Jane)
  • indirect monotransitive (ITST) = depend (John depend on Jane)
  • ditransitive (DTST) = give (John gave Jane an apple)
  • tritransitive (TTST) = trade (John traded Jane an apple for an orange)
  • ambitransitive (ATST) = eat (John ate or John ate an apple)

UNL

In UNL, transitivity, as a syntactic property, is not to be informed.