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Transitivity in Japanese grammar

Posted on April 18th, 2010 by in Language |

Verb transitivity, similar to valency, indicates whether a verb takes direct objects, or not. Unlike English, which is fairly lax in its rules on transitivity and allows ambitransitive verbs, the Japanese language divides most verbs into two groups: transitive and intransitive.

Intransitive: He slept till noon.
Transitive: She lifted the bag.
Ambitransitive: I broke the cup. and The cup broke.

Intransitive verbs are used according to the pattern S + が + V, whereas transitive verbs take on the pattern (S +) DO + を + V.

Intransitive: 会社のパソコンが壊れた。— The company computer broke down.
Transitive: 彼女が私のケータイを壊した。— She broke my mobile phone.

The only time you’ll see を used with an intransitive verb is when a location is the direct object of a motion verb.

Intransitive: ラーメン屋を出た。— I left the ramen shop.

As you can see in the examples above, there are two Japanese verbs for the English verb break; the intransitive 壊れる (こわれる) and the transitive 壊す (こわす). You can check out more examples in the following table:

Intransitive
Transitive
to exit出る
出す
to take out
to grow生える
生やす
to cultivate
to get up起きる
起こす
to wake sb
to get dry乾く
乾かす
to dry sth
to open開く
開ける
to open sth
to board乗る
乗せる
to take on board
to return返る
返す
to put back
to break壊れる
壊す
to break sth
to hang掛かる
掛ける
to hang sth
to burn焼ける
焼く
to bake
to be visible見える
見る
to look
to enter入る
入れる
to put in

While this makes it easier to understand how to use each verb, it also makes it important to learn the differences between them. To make the process more fun, you can learn Japanese verb pairs with my Japanese learning games which now include a new Transitivity grammar mode.

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+Philip Seyfi is a Russian new media developer, designer, and entrepreneur. He is the author of NihongoUp and co-founder of EduLift.

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  • Gimmeabreakman

    Nice but the you don't have the readings for the kanji. Some are easy like DERU and DASU. But some are not very common like HAYASU and HAERU. And some have various possible readings like 開く which could be AKU or HIRAKU. Man! this is hard! Now I have to go and do research. I think 開く can sometimes by transitive. No? I better check out your game!

  • http://divita.eu/ seifip

    Thnx for your comment. I believe that learning verb pairs is a great opportunity to learn the kanji at the same time as for each kanji you'll learn, you'll have 2 instantly useable verbs to go with :) Looking up each of the verbs in a dictionary will make you think about it more profoundly, look at some examples, etc.As for 開く, yes, it can sometimes be transitive (AFAIK, mostly as あく for mouth/eyes etc., and as ひらく for bank-accounts etc.). I've removed the word “strictly” from the introductory sentence not to cause any further confusion :)

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