Editing Intransitive verb (section)

==Ambitransitivity==
{{Main article|Ambitransitive verb}}
In many languages, there are "ambitransitive" verbs, which can occur either in a transitive or intransitive sense. For example, English ''play'' is ambitransitive, since it is grammatical to say ''His son plays'', and it is also grammatical to say ''His son plays guitar''. English is rather flexible as regards verb valency, and so it has a high number of ambitransitive verbs; other languages are more rigid and require explicit valency changing operations ([[grammatical voice|voice]], [[causative]] morphology, etc.) to transform a verb from intransitive to transitive or vice versa.

In some ambitransitive verbs are ''[[ergative verb]]s'' for which the alignment of the syntactic arguments to the semantic roles is exchanged. An example of this is the verb ''break'' in English.

:(1) ''{{green|He}} broke {{maroon|the cup}}.''
:(2) ''{{maroon|The cup}} broke.''

In (1), the verb is transitive, and the subject is the ''agent'' of the action, i.e. the performer of the action of breaking the cup. In (2), the verb is intransitive and the subject is the ''patient'' of the action, i.e. it is the thing affected by the action, not the one that performs it. In fact, the patient is the same in both sentences, and sentence (2) is an example of implicit [[middle voice]]. This has also been termed an ''anticausative''.

Other alternating intransitive verbs in English are ''change'' and ''sink''.

In the [[Romance language]]s, these verbs are often called ''pseudo-reflexive'', because they are signaled in the same way as [[reflexive verb]]s, using the [[clitic]] particle ''se''. Compare the following (in [[Spanish language|Spanish]]):

:(3a) {{lang|es|La taza se rompió.}} ("The cup broke.")
:(3b) {{lang|es|El barco se hundió.}} ("The boat sank.")
:(4a) {{lang|es|Ella se miró en el espejo.}} ("She looked at herself in the mirror.")
:(4b) {{lang|es|El gato se lava.}} ("The cat washes itself.")

Sentences (3a) and (3b) show Romance pseudo-reflexive phrases, corresponding to English alternating intransitives. As in ''The cup broke'', they are inherently without an agent; their [[deep structure]] does not and can not contain one. The action is not reflexive (as in (4a) and (4b)) because it is not performed by the subject; it just happens to it. Therefore, this is not the same as [[passive voice]], where an intransitive verb phrase appears, but there is an implicit agent (which can be made explicit using a complement phrase):

:(5) ''The cup was broken (by the child).''
:(6) {{lang|es|El barco fue hundido (por piratas).}} ("The boat was sunk (by pirates).")

Other ambitransitive verbs (like ''eat'') are not of the alternating type; the subject is always the agent of the action, and the object is simply optional. A few verbs are of both types at once, like ''read'': compare ''I read'', ''I read a magazine'', and ''this magazine reads easily''.

Some languages like Japanese have different forms of certain verbs to show transitivity. For example, there are two forms of the verb "to start":

: (7) {{Nihongo krt|"The meeting starts."|会議が始まる。|Kaigi ga hajimaru.}}

: (8) {{Nihongo krt|"The president starts the meeting."|会長が会議を始める。|Kaichō ga kaigi o hajimeru.}}

In Japanese, the form of the verb indicates the number of arguments the sentence needs to have.<ref>Tsujimura, N., ed. by Natalia Gagarina and I. Gülzow (2007). The acquisition of verbs and their grammar : the effect of particular languages. Dordrecht [u.a.]: Springer. p. 106. {{ISBN|978-1-4020-4336-9}}.</ref>