Talk:Ambitransitive verb

French examples
Ok for "the window breaks" (or "the piano plays"), although this example sounds to my French anticausative-unprone hear a rather English-Dutch-Swiss-German way-of-saying(-things).

What is your opinion about "j'te paye" meaning not "I pay [to] you" but "I pay your salary" or "I clean up my debt to you". The later sense is also be expressed with "j'te r(e)paye", but there is a long time I didn't hear it.

"I pay [to] you" is expressed by "j't'l'paye" -- or, in some regions "j't'i' paye" --, with an indefinite "l(e)" -- or "i(l)" following the regional preferance for the indefinite pronoun--. This indefinite is usually zero-marked and I don't see the reason of an explicit making, unless to admit the speaker need to distinguish between the intransitive and transitive form of "payer".

It seems that making the verb intransitive changes the semantic, is a way of saying that the the object is soo obvious that it is not even worth mentioning. To say "j'te r'paye" is to admit you have debt, while saing "j'te paye" is to amounce you have money.

An answer would be apreciated, or as we say "je-vous-le-re-rendrai", specifying the use of the verb "rendre" with a A-E-(O)-(I forbid myself to state the O because YOU know it)- valency.

— Preceding unsigned comment added by AlainD (talk • contribs) 20:47, 22 December 2006‎ (UTC)


 * Hi. I don't speak French, but I would say to only include example sentences that are found in good sources. A lot of times we don't understand fully the languages we speak (whether native or not). Just leave the examples to the pros. Joeystanley (talk) 17:35, 26 November 2013 (UTC)

Adding Verification
This article was tagged in April 2009 as not having sources or footnotes. I took a copy of the book Changing Valency and added appropriate page numbers. I've rewritten a lot of what was already said about agentive and patientive ambitranstivies. I apologize to the original author of that content.

One thing that is mentioned in the book is the issue with the terms "anticausative" and "unergative". I've mentioned this in the text, and removed discussion about these terms. I would encourage another source that defends the use of these terms.

The last section about Spanish examples of pseudo-reflexivity is not in Changing Valency (at least from what I've read so far). That section needs citations still.

Joeystanley (talk) 17:31, 26 November 2013 (UTC)