Transitive-Intransitive Word Pairs
Monday June 19, 2006Unless you’re just starting out in Japanese, you’ve probably noticed that Japanese has a lot of verb pairs — two verbs with the same kanji and meaning but with differing endings. Examples include 開く・開ける; つく・つける; 出る・出す; and so on. The difference in each such pair is that one version acts on its subject, and the other acts on a direct object (marked with を).
ドアが開く。 The door opens.
だれかがドアを開ける。 Someone opens the door.
The first example is an intransitive verb, and the second is a transitive verb, transferring the action of “opening” to a direct object. Here’s another example using 始まる:
映画は６時に始まる。 The movie starts at 6 o’clock.
映画を６時に始める。 The movie will be started at 6 o’clock.
I’m not going to give a lesson here on transitive (vt) and intransitive (vi) verbs; you can get that from any textbook. What I’m interested in is figuring out and remembering which verb of any pair is transitive. There’s no single rule to learn, but there are patterns.
Often, it’s a single kana changing its vowel sound:
hajimeru vt → hajimaru vi (“to start”)
Early on, I noticed one of the patterns was that the ‘e’ sound of a transitive verb became ‘a’ in its intransitive form, as with the example above. Let’s call this an “eru-aru” verb pair. But here are some more troublesome verbs:
aku vi → akeru vt (“to open”)
kiru vt → kireru vi (“to cut”)
In these cases, the pattern is that of the ‘u’ of the verb ending changing to ‘e’ with ‘ru’ added on. Let’s call this a “u-eru” type of pair. Unfortunately, the transitive verb can take either form, depending on the word!
Thankfully, I’ve found this page on transitive and intransitive verbs at the sci.lang.japan FAQ website. It has tables showing all the kinds of pairing and what patterns apply. From the list, we can make a few general observations:
1. U-eru and Eru-u are the only patterns that mirror each other and can be confused, thankfully.
2. Any verb ending in “su” is always the transitive member of its pair. I think of this “su” as a stronger sound, representing stronger action directed at a target. Example: okosu (to make something happen) / okoru (to happen).
3. Verbs ending in “iru”, “aru”, “waru”, and “reru” are always intransitive.
There’s also a group of verb pairs that don’t really fit any pattern — 出す・出る, 入れる・入る, etc. — and have to be learned on their own.
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Nice post! This is indeed a tricky topic.
I’m reconstructing this from memory, but you can kind of summarize the rules like this:
1. -(y)eru (OJ -yu, e.g. kikoeru)
2. -CVru (except -Ceru), -CVreru
3. -Ceru, -Cu
4. -CVsu, -CVseru
And say that for any word pair where both are on the list, the one with the higher number is transitive. This also covers a lot of the “irregular” ones like “deru” and “dasu”. Unfortunatey, you can’t apply it properly unless you know a bit about older forms of Japanese, (e.g. “owaru/oeru” was originally “oharu/oheru” and so it falls under -CVru (2) vs -Ceru (3); therefore “owaru” is intransitive)... and by the time you know that much, you’ve probably memorized the verbs anyway.
The other big problem then is deciding which is transitive in a -Ceru/-Cu pair, which have the same ranking. But this is not usually difficult. The basic rule is that the -Cu one is intransitive unless the action requires at least an implied direct object to make sense. So “uru” is transitive because you need a seller and a sold item, but “au” is intransitive because all you need is the subject.
Man, I bet I got something wrong.
— Matt Jun 21, 12:01 am #Thanks, Matt. That observation about e/eru pairs is a good one, even if it’s harder to determine for some words.
— Paul Davidson Jun 21, 01:27 am #