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RE: Transitive / Intransitive Verbs

RE: Transitive / Intransitive Verbs 

This poor little post got buried under Professor Conrad's 
treatise on voice. His treatise was such good reading that 
everyone stopped reading after they finished it. Having 
read his treatise, I think that the question I raised about 
the nature of verb transitivity might be worth explaining. 
It is not at all obvious for some of us how transitivity and 
voice are related.  

Here is the original Post with a new question added:

Jim Beale's question about J 3:30 raised a doubt in my 
mind that I had a clear understanding how the *Transitive 
/ Intransitive* qualities of a verb related to the Active \ 
Middle \ Passive issue. 

I took a short tour of the Grammars which were within 
easy reach and discovered what appears to be some 
minor discrepancies in how this issue is treated. 

Porter (Idioms) on page 63 cites Robertson and others to 
the effect that *Transitive / Intransitive* is not 
connected with the issue of Active \ Middle \ Passive. 
Dana & Mantey (a footnote on p154) sort the issue out 
fairly well. If I understand what they are saying I would 
concluded that *Transitive / Intransitive* issues belong 
to the domain of lexical semantics, not syntax. When we 
say that a verb is Transitive we are talking about what 
the word means in a particular context. Dana & Mantey 
specifically stress the point that transitivity is 
contextually determined. 

If this is the case, then all the discussion in Turner 
(Syntax, p51ff) about transitive verbs being used as 
intransitive in the NT and vise versa seems to be to be 
rather beside the point. If transitivity is an aspect of a 
words semantic value in a give context, then why should 
it be particularly noteworthy that this value can change 
either over time (diachronicly) or in different contexts 
(synchronicly). Turner seems to imply that transitivity 
should be some sort of permanent part of a verbs 
semantic baggage and then cites examples where this is 
not the case. 

I have three questions: 

First Question. Is transitivity a part of syntax or does it 
belong to lexical semantics, or does this question show 
evidence of a misunderstanding somewhere else? Is this a 
forced sort of either\or question that shows a weakness 
in the underlying language model?

Second Question: Is a verb that only appears in the 
passive or middle/passive form automatically 
intransitive? 

Third question: Is transitivity a *permanent* part of a 
verbs semantic baggage, and if so does this not violate 
the model that some of us are using for lexical semantics 
which denies the existence of fixed semantic values for 
words?

This is a rather muddled series of issues but I a sure that 
someone on the b-greek list will be able to sort it all out. 



Clay Bartholomew
Three Tree Point