Learn English – Can adverbs be qualified as transitive/intransitive

I will try to avoid begging the transitive question.

When eat is used without a direct object it usually has a somewhat different meaning than it does when used with a direct object: something closer to ‘take a meal’. For instance:

• You're in plenty of time, we haven't eaten yet = Dinner has not yet been served.
• No, thanks, I ate already = I already had lunch.

In some circumstances, to be sure, it does imply eat something:

I'm famished, I haven't eaten at all today = I haven't eaten anything today.

But U.S. children would not answer the question Who ate this apple?^† with I didn't eat—that would be non-responsive, because it answers a different question. They would be more likely to say something like I didn’t eat it!^‡

^†Actually, this question would probably not be asked, since the apple is no longer present. The question would probably be Who ate that apple?

^‡Actually, they would probably answer Not me!—which would come out Dobbe!, because their mouth would be full.

The oldest senses documented in OED 1 are transitive, dating from the end of the 16th century (“To admit to a university degree”) and early 17th century (“To qualify (a person) for a degree”).

However, intransitive senses—“To take a university degree”, “To qualify as...”—have been around since the early 19th century. Dr Johnson accounted a century adequate to establish a poet’s reputation, so I think two centuries will suffice to establish a new use for a word.

Remarkably, OED 1’s earliest citations for the intransitive senses are from the poet Southey; and it was in Southey’s circle that another innovation first emerged into written English, damned by contemporary grammarians as an “awkward perversion”, a “solecism too palpable to receive any favor”—the passive progressive construction.