Talk:Intransitive case

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Partial Rewrite[edit]

I began a cleaning of this article, but I don't have time to finish it it the moment. Following is the part of the article that I revised. Feel free to include it in your edits.

Many languages employ an "SVO" grammar system. These systems are based on the concept of sentences containing a subject, a verb, and an object. This concept is easily understood by a speaker of language, for all sentences they construct include that which performs an action, the action performed, and, if applicable, that which the action is performed upon. For example, in the sentence "He throws the ball," "He" is the subject, or performer of the action, "throws" is the action performed, and "the ball" is the thing thrown, or acted upon, making it the object.

In some languages, the order of "SVO" within a sentence–i.e., a subject, followed by a verb, followed by an object–is not fixed. A noteworthy example of such flexibility is the Latin language.

However, in the Romance languages, such alterations of order require a shift in grammar. This is fortunate, as sense in these languages is often maintained by word order.

In English, sense is maintained despite shifting word orders by changing the tense of the verb from the


22:16, 2005 April 22‎ Frostyservant

Redirect Explanation[edit]

While I had started to rewrite this article above, I reecently found a better article on the same material. Seeing no value in the current article, I thought it best to simply convert the article to a redirect. Feel free to add in information from my rewrite (or from historical versions of this article) to the better article.

Same as absolutive?[edit]

How is this any different from the absolutive? Maybe this should be deleted and redirected to absolutive case. -Rmalouf (talk) 23:57, 19 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

The absolutive can be the patient of a transitive clause, but not the intransitive, since it's not an intransitive clause. It's only absolutive in the way the default English case is absolutive. — kwami (talk) 05:55, 20 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Okay, that makes sense. But... who calls that the intransitive case? The sources I'm familiar with all call that the absolutive (even for languages which mark the patient of a transitive verb differently), and all the google hits for "intransitive case" appear to have gotten the term from wikipedia. Unless someone can come up with reliable sources that define intransitive case this way, I'd still vote for deletion/merger with absolutive case. -Rmalouf (talk) 15:33, 20 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]