SENĆOŦEN: A Grammar of the Saanich Language

1 Transitive and Intransitive Verbs

The most important, basic element of SENĆOŦEN grammar is the distinction between transitive and intransitive. Every verb, in fact, every word in SENĆOŦEN is either transitive or intransitive, and that difference is important throughout the grammar. If you have a clear idea of the distinction, much of SENĆOŦEN grammar will fall quickly into place. Fortunately, the distinction is easy to get.

Transitive verbs are verbs that have a direct object. They indicate situations in which something is acting on something else. For example, ‘hit’ is a transitive verb in ‘I hit the ball.’ Here the ball is being acted on; it is the direct object. The subject of a transitive verb is the person performing the action.

Intransitive verbs are verbs that have no direct object. They indicate events in themselves. For example, in the sentence ‘I go’ the word is intransitive because you can’t ‘go’ something. The subject in ‘I go’ is ‘I.’

In SENĆOŦEN, transitive verbs always end a transitivizing suffix (like ‑T or ‑NEW̱) or in one of the object suffixes. Intransitive words never end in one of these suffixes. These topics will be covered in many of the sections of this grammar. For now, we will just look at how the transitive and intransitive subjects are expressed.
 

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