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On 1/17/06, Rex May <rmay@hidden.email> wrote: > I've been pondering the set of verbs which can be transitive or > intransitive in English. Cook, stand, burn, etc. I don't want that > in Ceqli, for obvious reasons. Eo has verbs which are intransitive, > but are made transitive with igi. Also, it has transitive verbs made > intransitive with ighi. That seems a bit messy at first glance. > I'm thinking that all these pairs in English should be handled thus: > > tunu - to cook, trans. > betunu - to cook, intrans. > > My thinking is that if something is cooking, burning, standing, > sitting, whatever, it is at least implied that something caused it to > do so, so the be- form is justified. Anybody know of an auxlang > where this has been thought out thoroughly? Vorlin marked all verbs for transitivity. From noun root words it derived transitive verbs with one suffix and intransitive verbs with another. That won't work in Ceqli, obviously. We had a long discussion of this on the konyalanguage mailing list a few months ago, and I think Larry finally decided on a hierarchy of preferred forms for concepts: >>>It's important in this approach to first try to define a concept in terms of an active verb. If that doesn't make sense, then we define it in passive terms, either as a substantive verb or a quality verb. It's also important that learners be taught this fundamental verb's meaning, even if they also learn the noun or modifier meaning as more common or useful. <<< I think he later on decided that active verbs should be inherently transitive if it makes sense for them to be so, but I can't find the message quickly. -- Jim Henry http://www.pobox.com/~jimhenry