Transitive and Intransitive Verbs

English as a Second Language English Vocabulary, Grammar and Idioms
21

Dozy,
Thanks for your explanation.

  1. Teacakes(O) should be served(tv) hot with butter.
  2. Breakfast(O) is served(tv) until 9 a.m.
  3. The sofa had to serve(iv) as a bed.
  4. He wanted to serve(iv) in the army.
    Could you check and confirm if my observations written within brackets is correct or not?
22

I think she can use ‘fast’, as well, in place of ‘hard’.
As regards parts of speech I would say that the verb ‘held’ is intransitive in 3: She held (tv) to the railing (O) hard (adv).

23

The question doesn’t exist because the sentence is not correct English.

24

1/2. “teacakes” and “breakfast” are the (passive) subjects.

25

Dozy,
I agree with your explanations.
What about my other observations?
Are they correct?
If not, please correct them all.
If there is object present in those sentences, please indicate.
Thanks.

26

In #1 and #2, the verbs were transitive before being put into the passive voice. I wouldn’t have thought to try to classify them as either transitive or intransitive after being made passive. However, the sources that I have found that express a view seem to classify such passive verbs as intransitive.

Regarding #3 and #4, the more closely a verb is bound to a preposition/adverb to create a certain meaning, the more sense it makes to consider it a transitive phrasal verb rather than an intransitive verb plus other stuff. For example, in “I held on to the railing”, it makes more sense to consider “hold on to” as a transitive unit, rather saying that “hold” is intransitive. To tell, one can ask whether the supposed intransitive verb can stand by itself with the same kind of meaning. Can we say “I held” with the meaning of “I held on to the railing”? Not really. (Let me ignore for these purposes the possibility of treating “hold on” as the unit of meaning.) Can we say “He wanted to serve” with the meaning “He wanted to serve in the army”? Yes. Can we say “The sofa had to serve” with the meaning “The sofa had to serve as a bed”? This seems more marginal but probably just about possible.