What is "transitivity"

n. 1 (context grammar English) The degree in which any one verb can take/govern objects. 2 (context mathematics English) The property of being transitive.

1. n. (logic and mathematics) a relation between three elements such that if it holds between the first and second and it also holds between the second and third it must necessarily hold between the first and third

2. the grammatical relation created by a transitive verb [syn: transitiveness] [ant: intransitivity]

Transitivity or transitive may refer to:

In linguistics, transitivity is a property of verbs that relates to whether a verb can take direct objects and how many such objects a verb can take. It is closely related to valency, which considers other verb arguments in addition to direct objects. The obligatory noun phrases and prepositional phrases determine how many arguments a predicate has. Obligatory elements are considered arguments while optional ones are never counted in the list of arguments.

Traditional grammar makes a binary distinction between intransitive verbs that cannot take a direct object (such as fall or sit in English) and transitive verbs that take one direct object (such as throw, injure, kiss in English). In practice, many languages (including English) interpret the category more flexibly, allowing: ditransitive verbs, verbs that have two objects; or even ambitransitive verbs, verbs that can be used as both a transitive verb and an intransitive verb. Further, some verbs may be idiomatically transitive, while, technically, intransitive. This may be observed in the verb walk in the idiomatic expression To walk the dog.

In functional grammar, transitivity is considered to be a continuum rather than a binary category as in traditional grammar. The "continuum" view takes a more semantic approach. One way it does this is by taking into account the degree to which an action affects its object (so that the verb see is described as having "lower transitivity" than the verb kill).