Marry can be used both transitively:
"Paul Married Jane"
and intransitively:
"I got married".
Thus making the word ambitransitive
But it has a third use:
"Paul, the vicar Married Jane to Bob"
The last use is certainly transitive, but what is the word for this use?
Is this to do with (un)accusative and (un)ergative verbs?
Best Answer
"Words like Marry" are called Reciprocal Verbs, or Predicates, or Constructions.
They refer to sets (normally couples) of agents, instead of to a single agent. Marry is prototypic. Reciprocal predicates have unusual syntactic affordances, like the ability to swap subject and object without altering meaning. Note:
These meanings of marry are Inchoative -- they refer to change of state. Bill and Sue entered the state of being married, a Stative meaning. The adjective married describes the state, not the event of its inception:
but note
Finally, as usual when there is a Stative and an Inchoative sense of a verb (whether reciprocal or not), there is also a Causative sense of marry, meaning 'Cause to marry', and running through all the changes of the other senses, viz
To summarize, marry has
(derived from a past participle, but without verbal powers)
(a reciprocal verb, allowing argument-swapping)
(in several senses of cause, and several senses of marry)
Each one has different uses, constructions, and stigmata.