What’s The Difference?
“The great will not condescend to take anything seriously.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson
The first thing we need to look at is the difference between both Transitive and Intransitive verbs. What are they? How do they work? What do I know already?
I think by going over their individual uses, it’ll become more apparent what you know and don’t know. You may even find you know a little of each.
Transitive Verbs: Verbs that have a direct effect on something else. i.e. you did something, or someone else did something. Example: I broke the TV.
Intransitive Verbs: Something happened, but nothing had a direct effect on something else. Example: The TV is broken.
See the difference between them? It’s a pretty big one, but it seems kind of subtle at the same time. One is an action that you or someone else does that directly effects something else. The other is just something that happened. You didn’t do it – and although someone else might have done it, it’s not the important part of the sentence. It just happened.
I’m guessing this is still a little ambiguous, so why don’t we look at the differences using actual examples. Let’s start with Transitive Verbs.