INTRANSITIVE AND COPULAR PATTERNS
SUMMARY
1 Where there is no complementation the verb is said to be intransitive. The structure is S-V. Some verbs are always intransitive (arrive, snow, blink, vanish). Others represent intransitive uses of basically transitive verbs (eat, drive, read).
2 Some intransitive verbs, particularly those of position (live, lie) or movement (go, walk), usually require a Locative or Goal Complement, respectively.
3 Locative Adjuncts are commonly present but not necessarily required after many verbs such as work, arrive, retire and stop. Locative and other circumstantial information is often pragmatically inferred in discourse.
4 The S-V-Cs pattern contains a copular verb that links the subject to a Complement encoding what the subject is or becomes. The most typical copula is be. Other verbs used as copulas in English provide additional meaning to the mere linking. This may be sensory (look, feel, smell, sound, taste) or refer to a process of becoming (become, get, go, grow, turn). The notion of ‘being’ also includes being in a place, expressed by a circumstantial locative Complement.
5 We now use Verb instead of Predicator as it is the verb that controls the type of complement.
