1.4.2 transitive verbs

[yuwash]

You can actually say “swim the ocean” because swim is both a transitive verb and an intransitive verb (and a noun), if you look it up in a dictionary. The same seems to hold for many other traversal verbs. Further, note that a transitive verb not just can be used with a direct object, but it’s mandatory. I just can’t find an example where a word is only transitive verb, but e. g. the verb “give” is almost always used with a direct object (and an indirect object). A lookup of the Japanese verb 「泳ぐ」(to swim) didn’t yield any specification of whether it’s 自動詞 or 他動詞.

[Pomax]

You can, but doing so tends to make the verb meaning poetic or conceptual, rather than the practical nature of the Japanese version. Where in Japanese you "swim the ocean", the action that expresses translated to English is just "swim", with the same holding for all the other traversal verbs. ("swimming the ocean" is certainly possible but changes the interpretation of the verb statement). I'll try to make that clearer.

Also note that 自動 and 他動 are only "like" intransitive and transitive. The transitivity of verbs in western grammars does not fully map to the 自/他 concept in Japanese grammar. As for its identity in Japanese, a quick check using a paper dictionary (in this case, 新明解's 国語辞典) shows it as 自五 (i.e. 自動詞, 五段)

[yuwash]

Thanks for the info. It’s frustrating there’s no credible information about Japanese grammar in the Internet, as even looking at the websites of prominent publishers of Japanese dictionaries, it seems they’re only interested in selling their printed products. OK, so does it mean, if it’s only 自動詞 you can’t 「海を泳ぐ」? (Jisho.org confirms it’s intransitive) When one believes in the Japanese Grammer Guide (Yes I fully accept that 「つく」(get on) 「消える」 (go off) can’t have objects) it couldn’t have an object. IMO it only makes sense if 「泳ぐ」 is both 自動 and 他動. Since Japanese dictionaries seem not completely consistent in this, it could be only noting the classification for the first meaning.

[Pomax]

that's the fun part: all these verbs are 自動詞, and don't take a "direct object". So we need to be careful: just because the Japanese を maps to the western "direct object", that doesn't mean it can't be anything else. It's very easy to say that "を is the direct object particle, done", and it'll cover 99% of all use cases, but is also strictly speaking not true: it has a long history of different uses in a language that has changed a lot over the last 100 years, and in modern Japanese the particle を is used as a direct object marker, as a marker for "traversal medium" for a number of traversal verbs, and then finally the rare but nothing-to-do-with-verbs-at-all combinations with some more classical particles. The easy explanation might work for people who just want to learn the basics, but it ignores the more refined, real picture in which a particle actually has a lot of historical baggage and isn't just for that one thing a grammar course taught you it was for. It gets particularly fun when courses that pretend it's the direct object particle and nothing need to explain 出る, because that's where their explanation starts breaking down.

For our swimming example: 泳ぐ is 自動詞, and can be used in what, translated to English, is either transitive or intransitive form. In Japanese, however, the verb is always 自, and if its traversal medium is indicated, that uses を.

Japanese verbs don't exactly fit the western verb analysis model.The fact that most of the time they do just makes it that much weirder when they don't =)

[yuwash]

I understand that there is a difference between the function of を in 「リンゴを食べる」(eat an apple) and 「海を泳ぐ」(swim the ocean). It seems Japanese is more consistent than English, where you can also say “swim the backstroke” whilst you don’t say 「背泳ぎを泳ぐ」 but rather 「背泳ぎで泳ぐ」(swim by/with backstroke) in this case. And yes, with grammar rules you can never cover exactly every case in a natural language. The explanation that 他動詞 is equivalent to transitive verbs but 自動詞 to those verbs that have intransitive and optionally also transitive definitions seems to indeed cover 99%.

For 「海を泳ぐ」 or 「家を出る」 (leave your home) it’s not clear at all what that “object” has in common semantically. For such abstract phrases it seems the only thing you can do is to learn each verb with its own rules. (but still the word 出る doesn’t break the above hypothesis for 自動詞)