nycphotography said:
My grammar question is this: When we use a transitive verb, but omit the direct object (it being understood by context), is it still a transitive, just with an implied direct object, or does it become an intransitive?
It's an interesting question and the answer seems to depend on which dictionary or grammar book you consult. (It's amazing how much they disagree.) If you look up "kill" in Webster's or the American Heritage Dictionary, for example, they will tell you that it can be transitive ("The Black Death killed millions") or intransitive ("Smoking kills", "Thou shalt not kill"). Oxford dictionaries, on the other hand, say it's always a transitive verb, and calls those uses that don't have a direct object "absolute" uses.
Their definition of "absolute" is "(of an adjective or transitive verb) used or usable without an expressed noun or object (e.g.
the deaf,
guns kill)", which sounds awfully like a definition of an intransitive verb. But what they say for "intransitive" is "that [which] does not take or require a direct object (whether expressed or
implied)". The bit in parentheses is absent from the Webster's and AHD definitions.
So where do you draw the line between something that's not there because it's implied and something that's not there because it's not there? And is this a distinction worth making? I can pick a couple of examples that do show a difference in meaning (but that doesn't necessarily answer the question). The verb "close" can be transitive or intransitive, for example: "She closed the door" vs "The door closed". In the first example the subject causes the door to move. The verb describes action done by the subject to the direct object -- a perfect example of "transitivity". In the second example it is the subject that undergoes the movement rathrer than causing it -- quite different, really. The action described by the verb is not the same.
When you consider "Smoking kills thousands of people each year" vs "Smoking kills", the first is clearly transitive because the subject "acts on" the direct object, and the verb describes that action. Unlike the intransitive use of "close", though, in the second case the verb describes exactly the same kind of action, and the subject is still the actor acting upon someone else. There is still someone who gets killed (the same "thousands of people", most likely), they're just not mentioned. You can't kill without killing someone.
So, from this comparison of a grand total of two verbs, the distinction seems
valid. Whether it's
valuable or not is still open to debate, especially outside the field of linguistics. And it might not continue to be valid if you look at other verbs -- unfortunately I don't have a whole list of them in memory ready for analysis. And I'm sure there are cases where the distinction is fuzzy and grey.
