Académique Documents
Professionnel Documents
Culture Documents
Transitive Verbs
Subject + Verb + Object
They take a direct object after them and without the object they are incomplete.
Incomplete: I saw. (what did I see?)
Complete: I saw a bird. (a bird is the direct object here and completes the meaning)
Note: notice that you can understand a verb whether transitive or not by asking the question "what".
Example:
We played soccer.
Now that we can ask the question "what did you play?" it is transitive.
Note: some transitive verbs may take more than one object.
My son bought me a watch for my birthday.
They gave me a pay raise.
In the two sentences above the words in bold are indirect objects and the underlined words are direct objects; so, the verbs "buy
and give" are transitive.
They awarded a gold medal to the top 10 students.
The young girl brought some flowers to her mother.
In the two sentences above the words in bold are direct objects and the underlined words are indirect objects; so, the verbs
"award and bring" are transitive.
See more about double object verbs
Intransitive Verbs
Subject + Verb
They dont take objects after them.
Example:
Sandra cried.
We cant ask the question "what did she cry?" so its intransitive.
The room flooded.
We swam.
The birds flew.
He jumped.
Note: notice that most intransitive verbs describe movement, and are usually followed by a prepositional or adverbial phrase to
complete the meaning of the sentence with extra information.
Examples:
http://www.grammarbank.com/transitive-intransitive-verbs.html
1/3
11/13/2014
go
agree
happen
arrive
laugh
become
occur
belong
rise
collapse
sit
cost
sleep
depend
stay
die
swim
emerge
jump
exist
explode
fly
http://www.grammarbank.com/transitive-intransitive-verbs.html
2/3
11/13/2014
http://www.grammarbank.com/transitive-intransitive-verbs.html
3/3