A Corpus-Driven Study of Syntactic And Semantic Models of Transitivized English Intransitive Verbs

Transitivized English intransitive verbs, abbreviated as transitivized EIVs in the present study, refer to the English intransitive verbs which are transitively used taking direct objects as normal transitive verbs do. This study aims to systematically explore their syntactic and semantic patterns through a specialized corpus with 585 instances of 211 transitivized EIVs from the EIV corpus and approximately 97,000 words from the instances of 210 transitivized EIVs from the Corpus of Contemporary American English. To code the syntactic and semantic patterns of transitivized EIVs, conventional lexical and phrasal categories as well as the Ideal Motion Event Category were employed. The results of investigation indicate that the transitivized EIVs feature three major syntactic patterns: “EIVs + NP/Pron. + Zero”, “EIVs + NP/Pron. + meaning-supplementing expressions” and “EIVs + one’s way + Prep.-Phr.” while their semantic patterns are governed by law: The basic semantic pattern of the transitivized EIVs is the cause sense, but with its weakening or backgrounding, the other semantic patterns take the stage involving the sense combination of cause and manner, the sense of manner or the sense of abstract motion. This study offers a relatively comprehensive landscape of the linguistic phenomenon of transitivized EIVs and is believed capable of facilitating a better understanding of EIVs, thereby flexible and appropriate use of EIVs in intercultural communication.