Talk:Monotransitive verb

"buy" verb
I'm not an english expert or anything (and don't know a whole lot about monotransitive verbs), but I was thinking that using the verb "to buy" isn't a very good example because it can sometimes also have an indirect object:

I bought him a cow.

subject: I

indirect object: him

direct object: cow

it can also be reflexive but its redundant:

I bought myself a cow. (same as "I bought a cow," but still.)

Since I don't really know what I'm talking about I didn't edit it and also its ok in the example since it is monotransitive but I just thought it would be a better example with a verb that is only monotransitive, like or "eat" or something. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 24.19.25.253 (talk) 07:01, 14 May 2007 (UTC).

I think the English "buy" is a fine example because it's debatable whether English actually has indirect objects—you can add a third dependent by adding a preposition, as in "I bought a cow for him" or by moving the pronoun, as in "I bought him a cow", but it's not clear that you can form a rule out of this.

"Eat" on the other hand, is actually ambitransitive—it doesn't always require an object. "I ate" is a perfectly good sentence. Ebolamunkee (talk) 23:07, 18 November 2011 (UTC)

Merger proposal
I'm a grad student in linguistics and study transitivity quite a bit, so I was surprised to find this page. I have never heard "monotransitive" and it mean something different than just "transitive." I suppose the term is technically out there to go with "ditransitive", but is this a topic worth covering on a separate page? This page has no citations anyway, which further suggests it doesn't quite make the cut for a separate page. Joeystanley (talk) 20:47, 29 April 2014 (UTC)


 * Support merging Monotransitive verb to Transitive verb. I have read and heard monotransitive, but only in discussions of transitivity (by definition), and usually in close proximity to ditransitive or pseudo-ditranstive. I can't imagine an article on the topic growing beyond a stub, or at best a short discussion and a long list of examples. It might also be worth discussing a merger of Transitive verb with Transitivity (grammar), but it is perhaps best to see first if there is support for the merger Joeystanley has proposed. Cnilep (talk) 05:32, 30 April 2014 (UTC)
 * Support Seems a pretty cut-and-dry case of a content fork. As has been discussed, there is nothing in the present version of the article that distinguishes the concept from a general transitive verb.  Further, there are no sources here to establish weight or notability for this particular usage.  Good catch, Joey.  Snow (talk) 07:07, 30 April 2014 (UTC)