English Grammar Understanding the Basics

Take a look at the following questions, each with an action verb.

1. What did you write?

2. Who did you annoy?

3. What did you throw?

These are all perfectly fine questions and easy to answer, e.g. I wrote a letter, I annoyed my neighbor, I threw a ball.

Now compare the first group of questions to the next group, each of which also has an action verb.

1. 4. *What did you sleep?

2. 5. *What did you die?

3. 6. *Who did you arrive?

These questions are all strange and can't really be answered. That's because the verbs in this second group are verbs that do not act on anything.

Thus, you can see that there are two kinds of verbs. One kind, such as write, annoy, and throw, acts upon something. The noun (or noun phrase; see Lesson 28) that the verb acts upon is called the direct object of the sentence. (You'll learn more about direct objects in Lesson 39.) Those verbs that act on something are called transitive verbs. Typically, in statements, a transitive verb is followed by the noun (or noun phrase) that it is acting upon.

Other verbs, such as sleep, die, and arrive, do not act upon something. In fact, these verbs can't have a direct object. Notice that you can't say, for example: *I usually sleep the dog, *They'll arrive the book. Those verbs that do not act on something and appear in sentences that do not have a direct object are called intransitive verbs.