Transitive form of intransitive verbs

[em3ry]

In my conlang adjectives are verbs:

• "It is being-blue".

What meaning could be assigned to the transitive form of such a word?

• "It is being-blue it".

[Travis B.]

A good example of a valence-increasing operation is an applicative, which turns a non-core argument (e.g. the object of an adposition) into a core argument; the exact meaning depends on the meaning of the applicative in question, and there is no single answer for that.

[em3ry]

I am specifically interested in the verb forms of adjectives denoting properties of objects. (hot, long, blue, hard...)

[Richard W]

I would expect that making one transitive would make it causative.

[Vardelm]

I am specifically interested in the verb forms of adjectives denoting properties of objects. (hot, long, blue, hard...)

Some languages just work this way, and in many or most cases they work the same as regular "action" verbs.

What meaning could be assigned to the transitive form of such a word?

• "It is being-blue it".

What is your intent here? Is the 1st "it" causing the second "it" to be or become blue? If so, this would be a "causative", which generally makes the verb transitive.

Or, is it that the 2 "its" are the same entity, and "it" is causing itself to be blue? Or, is it intentionally, actively trying to be blue? Again, these are maybe causatives, or possibly reflexive forms of the verb.

Finally, do you just mean that "it" is blue, and you're wondering if just making it transitive affects the meaning somehow?

[Travis B.]

One note about causatives is that they often demote the original subject or agent and become a new agent, even though what exactly happens to the demoted original subject or agent varies from language to language. I didn't picture that you were asking about causatives, though, since you put "it" in what is typically the object position in a pseudo-English example, which is much more in line with applicatives (since applicatives turn things like prepositional objects into direct objects and like).

[Rounin Ryuuji]

In my conlang adjectives are verbs:

• "It is being-blue".

Mine, too. Mine's Japonic, so it's to be expected. It's a trait I like either way, though. I'm guessing this example is meant to be as in Japanese:

青い花 (aoi hana) - "the/a blue flower"

As opposed to:

花は青い (hana wa aoi) - "the flower is blue"

What meaning could be assigned to the transitive form of such a word?

• "It is being-blue it".

Japanese adjectives don't, that I'm aware, mark transitivity, or have certain verb forms, like a causative. If you could somehow change the transitivity (Proto-Japonic seems to have had a "transitive switch" with the form *e, so I assume the transitive-switched form would end in -ke- or -se-). So if we made it transitive with this marker...

＊花を青せい *Hana wo aosei sounds like it ought to mean something "(something) blues the flower", so it might imply the result of some form of process undergone to become blue, in which case: My instinct, as a language builder, is to just make it a verb at this point rather than calling it an adjective (which would probably result in a morphological shift to ＊花を青せる *Hana wo aoseru, which would probably just mean "make the flower blue".

＊青せい花 *Aosei hana would probably mean "the flower that causes things to become blue, the flower that blues things", but again, I would instinctively think this would just turn into a verb, and have its morphology change as above to reflect this.

Putting some past tense morphology on it could also perhaps make it seem as if it were an adjective specifically noting the result of a process.

[bradrn]

In my conlang adjectives are verbs:

• "It is being-blue".

What meaning could be assigned to the transitive form of such a word?

• "It is being-blue it".

Almost always, transitivisation of stative intransitives produces a causative: It is.blue vs X makes.blue it. Note that the intransitive argument corresponds to the transitive object (cf English it broke vs X broke it). However, it seems rather rare in natlangs to have transitive forms of adjectives, even in languages where almost all other intransitive verbs may be used transitively.

[Moose-tache]

Japanese adjectives are made causative with -ku suru. Technically, that makes it a verb phrase, but it was already basically that anyway. Since this is one of the simplest things you could do to an adjective (its literal translation would be something like "-ly do"), I think this supports the notion that turning adjectives into transitives is likely to result in a causative derivation.

In English, using a stative verb or adjective as a transitive verb is almost always causative. For other verbs, though, it's more chaotic. For example "She wined and dined me." Is "to dine someone" a causative (i.e. "She made me dine.") or benefactive (i.e. "She fed me," "She fooded me up.")? I wonder if some languages have solid rules of valence-increase that are dependent on semantic category. Handling verbs become instrumental? Perception verbs become some weird applicative?

[Creyeditor]

Not really sure if there is a clear natlang precedent, but an applicative could also add an experiencer. "It blues me" would mean something like "It looks blue to me" or "I see it being blue."

[hwhatting]

Another possibility would be exposure - "it blues me" means "it exposes me to blue".