Transitivity Alternations in English

Transitivity Alternations

The Middle Alternation

The middle alternation involves a change in a verb's transitivity. Transitive verbs with an agent subject and a patient object can have an intransitive pattern. The subject of this intransitive pattern takes on the role of the object in the transitive use, followed by an adverbial or prepositional phrase.

Example:

• Transitive: The carpenter sawed the wood.
• Intransitive: The wood saws easily.

Verbs allowing the middle alternation express a change of state in the object. The middle construction emphasizes the subject being affected by the action (affectedness constraint). Verbs like pat or touch, where the object isn't affected, don't allow this construction.

Example:

• They hit the ball.
• *The ball hits easily.

Because the middle construction focuses on the end result, it's only possible with verbs like break and cut (involving a change of state), not with verbs like touch and hit.

The Conative Alternation

In the conative alternation, the subject remains the same in both transitive and intransitive variants, keeping the same thematic role. The difference lies in the other argument. In the conative construction, the object of the transitive variant is expressed in a prepositional phrase with "at."

Example:

• Transitive: They hit me fiercely.
• Conative: They hit at me fiercely.

The conative construction (from Latin conor/conari, meaning "try" or "attempt") suggests an attempted action without confirming completion. There's no guarantee the action was carried out.

Not all transitive verbs allow the conative construction.

Example:

• They touched its paw.
• *They touched at its paw.

Levin suggests that both motion and contact through impact are necessary for the conative construction. This explains its possibility with cut and hit, but not with break and touch.