Transitive vs. Intransitive verbs [Grammar #5]

This video is about the difference between transitive and intransitive verbs. I also talk about some transitive-intransitive pairs in English and Japanese.

I forgot to mention in the video about the relationship between transitivity and the passive voice. Normally, transitive verbs can be passivised, while intransitive verbs cannot. However, Japanese has a weird construction called the 'indirect passives', which were featured on my past 'Grammar' videos. (These videos are quite old.)

This video took a long time to make because I spent way too much analysing the data, even though the analyses yielded no interesting results, no matter what methods I tried.

Links:

Background music credit:

[waporwave]

I don't care about a subject until you start talking about it, seriously I watch your videos on things that I have no interest in, but you somehow make it so intriguing.

[Thuuralin]

Loved the last segment! Very interesting 😊

[brendan]

This explains (in)transitive verbs very well, I particularly liked the explanation of how the を
marker functions when used with intransitive verbs, very well explained and makes so much sense. I never really understood why I kept seeing it until you just simply explained it now. Also, loved the extra mile at the end!

[byprinciple]

Hey Komei, I'm really not great at understanding transitive vs intransitive as I'd like to be (regarding Japanese). I understand direct and indirect objects (such as using を and に), so my question probably has an obvious answer.

Do verb conjugations count as changing an intransitive verb into a transitive? I'm thinking of the causative form of verbs (～させる）. I'd like to know what you think. (sorry if it doesn't make sense)
Ex.

1. 私は寝ました (T)

I slept

2. 子供を布団に寝せる
(He) let the child sleep on the futon

I'm not sure what the consensus is on the English side, it feels like 'to sleep' is obviously intransitive, but 'to make/to let sleep' feels very transitive due to these added verbs. Thanks again :)

[azer]

You missed one big pattern in your analysis. in TI pair, if one of the verb ends with 'aru' (the sound, so ある、but also かる、まる、たる etc are also ok) then it's the intransitive one.

So with those two patterns (す / せる are the transitive one and aru are the intransitive one), when looking at a TI pair, I think we can actually predict most of the time..

Outside of TI pairs, it's much more difficult.

[rikuown]

Whoa you learned how to say the b in verb!?