Editing Intransitive verb (section)

==Valency-changing operations==
The [[Valency (linguistics)|valency]] of a verb is related to transitivity. Where the transitivity of a verb only considers the objects, the valency of a verb considers all the [[Verb argument|arguments]] that correspond to a verb, including both the subject of the verb and all of the objects.

It is possible to change the contextually indicated sense of a verb from transitive to intransitive, and in so doing to change the [[Valency (linguistics)|valency]].

In languages that have a [[passive voice]], a transitive verb in the active voice becomes intransitive in the passive voice. For example, consider the following sentence:

{{block indent|''David hugged Mary.''}}

In this sentence, "hugged" is a transitive verb with "Mary" as its object. The sentence can be made passive with the direct object "Mary" as the [[subject (grammar)|grammatical subject]] as follows:

{{block indent|''Mary was hugged.''}}

This shift is called ''promotion'' of the object.

The passive-voice construction does not indicate an object. The passivized sentence could be continued with the [[Agent (grammar)|agent]]:

{{block indent|''Mary was hugged by David.''}}

It cannot be continued with a direct object to be taken by "was hugged". For example, it would be ungrammatical to write "Mary was hugged her daughter" to show that Mary and her daughter shared a hug.<!-- NOTE: This sentence is ripe for deletion as [[WP:UNDUE]].-->

Intransitive verbs can be rephrased as passive constructs in some languages. In English, intransitive verbs can be used in the passive voice when a prepositional phrase is included, as in, "The houses were lived in by millions of people."

Some languages, such as [[Dutch language|Dutch]], have an [[impersonal passive voice]] that lets an intransitive verb without a prepositional phrase be passive. In [[German language|German]], a sentence such as "The children sleep" can be made passive to remove the subject and becomes, "They are slept." However, no addition like "...&nbsp;by the children" is possible in such cases.

In languages with [[ergative–absolutive language|ergative–absolutive alignment]],<!--Don't link "alignment" to a separate topic because it may be confused as a continuation of the preceding link--> the passive voice (where the object of a transitive verb becomes the subject of an intransitive verb) does not make sense, because the noun associated with the intransitive verb is marked as the object, not as the subject. Instead, these often have an [[antipassive voice]]. In this context, the ''subject'' of a transitive verb is promoted to the "object" of the corresponding intransitive verb. In the context of a [[nominative–accusative language]] like English, this promotion is nonsensical because intransitive verbs do not entail objects, they entail subjects. So, the subject of a transitive verb ("I" in ''I hug him'') is ''also'' the subject of the intransitive passive construction (''I was hugged by him''). But in an ergative–absolutive language like [[Dyirbal language|Dyirbal]], "I" in the transitive ''I hug him'' would involve the [[ergative case]], but the "I" in ''I was hugged'' would involve the [[absolutive case|absolutive]], and so by analogy the antipassive construction more closely resembles ''*was hugged me''. Thus in this example, the ergative is promoted to the absolutive, and the agent (i.e., ''him''), which was formerly marked by the absolutive, is deleted to form the antipassive voice (or is marked in a different way, in the same way that in the English passive voice can still be specified as the agent of the action using ''by him'' in ''I was hugged by him''—for example, Dyirbal puts the agent in the [[dative case]], and [[Basque language|Basque]] retains the agent in the absolutive).