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- Public domaingeneral-american
Academic Writing: Common Sentence Patterns, Part Four
This pattern is common in writing, speaking, and even on language tests, such as the Test of English as a Foreign Language, or TOEFL.
- Public domaingeneral-american
Academic Writing: Common Sentence Patterns, Part Four
To get you started thinking about transitive verbs, consider this stanza from "Preface to a Twenty Volume Suicide Note," by the famous author Amiri Baraka.
- Public domaingeneral-american
Academic Writing: Common Sentence Patterns, Part Four
And now, each night I count the stars. And each night I get the same number.
- Public domaingeneral-american
Academic Writing: Common Sentence Patterns, Part Four
And when they will not come to be counted, I count the holes they leave.
- Public domaingeneral-american
Academic Writing: Common Sentence Patterns, Part Four
By the end of this story, you will understand one transitive verb pattern that Baraka uses in this stanza.
- Public domaingeneral-american
Academic Writing: Common Sentence Patterns, Part Four
In a previous Everyday Grammar we discussed intransitive verbs. One feature of intransitive verbs is that they do not require a complement.
- Public domaingeneral-american
Academic Writing: Common Sentence Patterns, Part Four
In other words, there does not need to be a noun phrase or adjective to the right of the verb in the sentence.
- Public domaingeneral-american
Academic Writing: Common Sentence Patterns, Part Four
Unlike intransitive verbs, transitive verbs take one or more complements.
- Public domaingeneral-american
Academic Writing: Common Sentence Patterns, Part Four
Complements, in this case, refer to nouns or noun phrases that are immediately to the right of the verb in the sentence.
- Public domaingeneral-american
Academic Writing: Common Sentence Patterns, Part Four
In its most basic form, the direct object is the noun phrase that follows a transitive verb.
- Public domaingeneral-american
Academic Writing: Common Sentence Patterns, Part Four
A noun phrase is a noun and all the words and phrases that describe it.
- Public domaingeneral-american
Academic Writing: Common Sentence Patterns, Part Four
The basic transitive verb pattern is this: Transitive verbs are
- Public domaingeneral-american
Academic Writing: Common Sentence Patterns, Part Four
often but by no means always! action words. One way to know if the noun phrase is a direct object is if it is the receiver of the action of the verb.
- Public domaingeneral-american
Academic Writing: Common Sentence Patterns, Part Four
You can tell that the softball is receiving the action, hit. However, the direct object does not always have to be the receiver of an action.
- Public domaingeneral-american
Academic Writing: Common Sentence Patterns, Part Four
Consider this sentence: My family enjoyed the concert In this sentence, it is hard to say that the direct object, the concert, is really receiving an
- Public domaingeneral-american
Academic Writing: Common Sentence Patterns, Part Four
action. So, this leads us to another way to think of the direct object.
- Public domaingeneral-american
Academic Writing: Common Sentence Patterns, Part Four
It is the answer to a what or whom question. Consider these examples: Dirty laundry covered (what?)
- Public domaingeneral-american
Academic Writing: Common Sentence Patterns, Part Four
the bedroom floor. We enjoyed (what?)
- Public domaingeneral-american
Academic Writing: Common Sentence Patterns, Part Four
the concert. The teacher helped (whom?)
- Public domaingeneral-american
Academic Writing: Common Sentence Patterns, Part Four
Once again, asking the what or whom question will not work all of the time, but it can be a useful strategy to help you recognize the direct object.
- Public domaingeneral-american
Academic Writing: Common Sentence Patterns, Part Four
So, if it can be difficult to find the direct object, how can you tell if a verb is transitive? There are two reliable ways to check: 1.
- Public domaingeneral-american
Academic Writing: Common Sentence Patterns, Part Four
Think back to the example sentence, Mary hit the softball If you change it to the passive voice, the sentence would be, The softball was hit by Mary
- Public domaingeneral-american
Academic Writing: Common Sentence Patterns, Part Four
If you can change the sentence from active to passive voice, then the verb is probably transitive.
- Public domaingeneral-american
Academic Writing: Common Sentence Patterns, Part Four
You can read more about the passive voice in a previous Everyday Grammar story.
- Public domaingeneral-american
Academic Writing: Common Sentence Patterns, Part Four
This strategy, say Robert Funk and Martha Kolln, two English grammar experts, is the best way to identify a transitive verb.
Source badges: Public domain · Creator video · Digital presenter · Reference recording. Literary passages are public domain. Studio notes are not spoken in the audio.