I was doing an exercice about identifying types of verbs (transitive or intransitive) in a sentence. And I am confused about a sentence.
An old baggar stood by the gate.
In the answer for the above sentence, the verb is marked as an intransitive verb.
But as per the explanation in the book, a transitive verb is one that passes over a subject to an object. And in the above sentence the object is gate.
In the above sentence, is the verb stood transitive or intransitive? And how?
Best Answer
Unfortunately, Ghanshyam, for non-natives like us, there is only one way to learn things in English. Memorize them. Especially for Indians where we have our own rules to amend the language, there is nothing we can do. Just observe native speakers and their styles and you learn. That's it.
Well, now here, it's an intransitive verb. True. That's because transitive verbs requires something to transfer! [I remember that way -transitive transfer, intransitive, no transfer, thanks grammargirl]
Said that, intransitive verbs can stand alone without any support. They won't look odd. Say--
the sentence is fine without any additional information.
But then...
is 'half'. You want 'what'? So, here, the verb 'want' is transitive which requires something to transfer. You add 'what you want' and it is a complete sentence. They call it as an object.
In your example,
'by the gate' is an additional information but not necessary to complete the sentence.
Hence, they mark it with 'intransitive'.
The verb 'stand' is both transitive and intransitive but in its general (and most of?) usages, it's 'transitive'. More information is on OALD.