Transitive verb in the context of "Object (grammar)"

Active voice is a grammatical voice prevalent in many of the world's languages. It is the default voice for clauses that feature a transitive verb in nominative–accusative languages, including English and most Indo-European languages. In these languages, a verb is typically in the active voice when the subject of the verb is the doer of the action.

In active voice, the subject of the sentence performs the action expressed by the main verb and is thus the agent. For example, in the sentence "The cat ate the fish", 'the cat' functions as the agent performing the action of eating. This contrasts with the passive voice, where the subject is the recipient of the action, such as in "The fish was eaten by the cat." The use of both active and passive voices in languages enhances versatility in sentence construction, allowing either the semantic agent or patient to assume the syntactic role of the subject.

In linguistic typology, ergative–absolutive alignment is a type of morphosyntactic alignment in which the subject of an intransitive verb behaves like the object of a transitive verb, and differently from the subject of a transitive verb. Examples include Basque, Georgian, Mayan, Tibetan, Sumerian, and certain Indo-European languages (such as Pashto and the Kurdish languages and many Indo-Aryan languages like Hindustani). It has also been attributed to the Semitic modern Aramaic (also called Neo-Aramaic) languages. Ergative languages are classified into two groups: those that are morphologically ergative but syntactically behave as accusative (for instance, Basque, Pashto and Urdu) and those that, on top of being ergative morphologically, also show ergativity in syntax. Languages that belong to the former group are more numerous than those to the latter.

The ergative-absolutive alignment is in contrast to nominative–accusative alignment, which is observed in English and most other Indo-European languages, where the single argument of an intransitive verb ("She" in the sentence "She walks") behaves grammatically like the agent (subject) of a transitive verb ("She" in the sentence "She finds it") but different from the object of a transitive verb ("her" in the sentence "He likes her"). When ergative–absolutive alignment is coded by grammatical case, the case used for the single argument of an intransitive verb and the object of a transitive verb is the absolutive, and the case used for the agent of a transitive verb is the ergative. In nominative-accusative languages, the case for the single argument of an intransitive verb and the agent of a transitive verb is the nominative, while the case for the direct object of a transitive verb is the accusative.

In grammar, the ergative case (abbreviated erg) is the grammatical case that identifies a nominal phrase as the agent of a transitive verb in ergative–absolutive languages.

In grammar, the accusative case (abbreviated ACC) of a noun is the grammatical case used to receive the direct object of a transitive verb.

In the English language, the only words that occur in the accusative case are pronouns: "me", "him", "her", "us", "whom", and "them". For example, the pronoun she, as the subject of a clause, is in the nominative case ("She wrote a book"); but if the pronoun is instead the object of the verb, it is in the accusative case and she becomes her ("Fred greeted her"). For compound direct objects, it would be, e.g., "Fred invited me and her to the party".

In linguistic typology, active–stative alignment (also split intransitive alignment or semantic alignment) is a type of morphosyntactic alignment in which the sole argument ("subject") of an intransitive clause (often symbolized as S) is sometimes marked in the same way as an agent of a transitive verb (that is, like a subject such as "I" or "she" in English) but other times in the same way as a direct object (such as "me" or "her" in English). Languages with active–stative alignment are often called active languages.

The case or agreement of the intransitive argument (S) depends on semantic or lexical criteria particular to each language. The criteria tend to be based on the degree of volition, or control over the verbal action exercised by the participant.

A finite verb is a verb that contextually complements a subject, which can be either explicit (like in the English indicative) or implicit (like in null subject languages or the English imperative). A finite transitive verb or a finite intransitive verb can function as the root of an independent clause. Finite verbs are distinguished from non-finite verbs such as infinitives, participles, gerunds etc.

Transitivity is a linguistics property that relates to whether a verb, participle, or gerund denotes a transitive object. It is closely related to valency, which considers other arguments in addition to transitive objects.

English grammar makes a binary distinction between intransitive verbs (e.g. arrive, belong, or die, which do not denote a transitive object) and transitive verbs (e.g., announce, bring, or complete, which must denote a transitive object). Many languages, including English, have ditransitive verbs that denote two objects, and some verbs may be ambitransitive in a manner that is either transitive (e.g., "I read the book" or "We won the game") or intransitive (e.g., "I read until bedtime" or "We won") depending on the given context.

In linguistics, pluractionality, or verbal number, if not used in its aspectual sense, is a grammatical aspect that indicates that the action or participants of a verb is, or are, plural. This differs from frequentative or iterative aspects in that the latter have no implication for the number of participants of the verb.

Often a pluractional transitive verb indicates that the object is plural, whereas in a pluractional intransitive verb the subject is plural. This is sometimes taken as an element of ergativity in the language. However, the essence of pluractionality is that the action of the verb is plural, whether because several people perform the action, it is performed on several objects, or it is performed several times. The exact interpretation may depend on the semantics of the verb as well as the context in which it is used. The lack of verbal number does not generally mean that the action and participants are singular, but rather that there is no particularly notable plurality; thus it may be better described as paucal vs. multiple rather than singular vs. plural.