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I'm not asking this in an ignorant way, I'm merely asking how it helps.

Robbie Blair
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2 Answers2

1

These rules are of no use whatsoever when you are learning English as a child. You learn by example and repetition when English is your first language (although they may be introduced to you when you are at school). They are not much use when you are trying to speak and write English fluently as a second language, since you cannot always be asking yourself if a verb is transitive or not. You just have to know, instinctively. However, they may be very useful when you are looking up a verb in a dictionary for the first time, and it would be a poor dictionary that did not give you this important information. These rules help you to understand, certainly, but they also inform.

Mick
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0

One of the main problems with learning English is the lack of inflections.

If I say

'I sang her a song'

it looks as though 'her' is one of two direct objects. But I cannot just say 'I sang her'. I have to say 'I sang to her', in order to form a grammatical sentence.

In many other languages the first sentence would have the word 'her' inflected to show that it was the dative case, 'to her'. It would then be quite clear that 'her' is not a direct object. But English does not do that.

'I sang to her'

is a grammatical sentence and uses 'sing' intransitively. It cannot be transitive because I sing a song, I do not sing her.

'I helped her clean the kitchen',

however, places 'her' as the direct object.

'I helped her'

can stand on its own as a sentence, grammatically: 'helped' is transitive and 'her' is the direct object.

But, at first glance, English appears to make both 'I sang her' and 'I helped her' possible, whilst the first is actually not.

So the problem, I think, is not recognising anything about the verbs, it is the fact that nouns do not inflect in English, for which, as a native English speaker, I offer my profuse apology because, having some acquaintance with Latin, French, Greek and Hebrew, I think inflected words are actually a better way in which to express concepts.

Nigel J
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