Many of you will know that there are transitive and intransitive verbs. I remember that when I first learned about these categories, as a teenager, I had a hard time making them stick. I kept confusing them. Wait, is that transitive? Or intransitive? Which is which now? 1/
As I often did then, I made my own mnemonic. The terms mark the difference between verbs that require an object and verbs that don't. I told myself each verb gets two things. Subject + object or subject + in-. I've been using that mnemonic ever since. 2/
Well, today is the day that by random occurrence I took a moment to consider the lexical meaning of the word transitive. That wasn't something that was meaningful to me several decades ago. I finally get why linguists chose the particular word "transitive" for this purpose! 3/
Hallelujah.
I'll still use the mnemonic though. It's more automated in my mind than going through the lexical meaning of the word. 4/
I'll still use the mnemonic though. It's more automated in my mind than going through the lexical meaning of the word. 4/
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