INTRANSITIVE AND COPULAR PATTERNS
SUBJECT – VERB
The pure intransitive pattern contains a one-place verb such as sneeze, which has a subject but no complement. We distinguish the following types of intransitive verb:
verbs of behavior which is typically involuntary or semi-voluntary: laugh, smile, cry, blink, blush, cough, sneeze, sigh, tremble, yawn; wait, stay; die, collapse, faint, fall (They all laughed, someone yawned, one soldier fainted.)
verbs of weather: rain, snow (It’s raining. It’s snowing. The sun rose.) verbs of occurrence: appear, disappear, go, come, arrive, depart, vanish, fade, happen: What happened? Hopes of avoiding war are now fading.
idiomatic intransitive phrasal verbs such as crop up as in a problem has cropped up, where there is no verb ‘crop’ of the same meaning. By contrast, with free combinations of verb + particle used literally as in the bird flew away, the particle is analyzed as a directional Complement. Opinions differ in this respect, however, some preferring Adjunct in the case of free combinations.
Note that some of these ‘pure intransitives’ can also function in other structures, as we shall see later on.
