Transitive English words becoming intransitive 外来語

Question

While reading naruto's answer to Difference in sentences (と and に）, I realized that although キス is an intransitive verb in Japanese, the English kiss is almost always used as a transitive verb. Some other examples of this are アクセス and リベンジ. My question is thus is there a reason why primarily transitive English words when converted to Japanese could become primarily intransitive words?

My expectation is that primarily transitive English words like to google or to master to become primarily transitive Japanese words and primarily intransitive English words like jump to become primarily intransitive Japanese, which is true for at least those three cases. Is the way words like キス became incorporated into Japanese different from words like マスター?

Answer 1

There should be exceptions, but I suppose this is largely based on the transitivity of the original Japanese verb before it was replaced by the loanword.

• (～に)キスする = (～に)口づけする
• (～に)アクセスする = (～に)進入する/接続する
• (～に)リベンジする = (～に)復讐する
• (～に)コンサルトする = (～に)相談する
• (～に)タッチする = (～に)触れる

When the original Japanese verb is transitive, the loanword version is also transitive.

• (～を)スタートする = (～を)開始する
• (～を)テストする = (～を)試験する

Occasionally, an English intransitive verb can be borrowed as a transitive suru-verb:

• (～を)リタイヤする = (～を)退職する = to retire from ～

Many loaned suru-verbs are not even based on English verbs, so it's not surprising if transitivity is ignored :)

• (～を)マイナスする = (～を)減算する
• (～を)リストラする = (～を)解雇する
• (～を)オンエアする = (～を)放送する

Answer 2

In linguistics, transitivity is a complex thing. In fact, it's not as simple as "transitive" vs "intransitive". Apparently, there's a scale, and English is overall higher on it than Japanese.

This means that the brackets of "transitivity" are placed a bit differently in Japanese and in fact contain fewer verbs than in English. Something that may be considered an "object" of a transitive action in English is more likely to fall into the "necessary extended argument" (recipient/beneficiary/theme) of an intransitive verb in Japanese. Especially if the typical "object" of that verb is a person that has agency independent of our own, or if we are not directly affecting that thing with the action in question.

I think the general rule of thumb is this:

Is the action being done directly ON the object (を) or TO the object (に)? Does the subject/agent have power over the object? Does the state of the object change?

(Movement verbs in Japanese are weird in this context, I'd love to see someone's thoughts on that)

Thus in Japanese, we are doing an act of revenge "to someone" and not "on someone", a person being kissed is not a direct object (ideally we don't force him/her) but a recipient, and when we're accessing something, we're not changing it.

I think that's also why in Japanese "like" is intransitive ("something is liked", we're not affecting it in any way by liking it), "to understand" is intransitive (because we're not affecting the area that is being understood, and understanding is a state that we reach with little agency over the process) and "to know" is transitive (and refers in fact to that moment in which we "got to know" the information, thus we have some agency over that information, it's more direct).

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(You may want to stop reading now, because it's about to get a bit more technical and skim the edges of rambling...)

As I understand it, there are two types of transitivity: semantic (what something means) and syntactic (how it's coded by the language). These aren't always the same thing.

Semantically, there are four (and not two) types of verbs (examples are from English):

• strictly intransitive, e.g. arrive, chat
• strictly transitive, e.g. recognize, like
• ambitransitive verbs, where Subject=Agent, verbs allowing "indefinite object deletion", e.g. follow, win, eat, read (there's an object, we just don't say it explicitly: when we say "I read" there's a book or newspaper in there somewhere, we just don't mention it)
• ambitransitive verbs, where Subject=Object, called also "inchoative-causative"* verb pairs, e.g. melt, trip (one may argue that those are just two different verbs in a pair, which in some languages just "look the same", so in English "to break something" semantically doesn't equal "to break on its own" - in this light the existence of transitive/intransitive verb pairs in Japanese is a natural thing, and English is the weird one)

Depending on the language, the verb can fall into different categories.

inchoative = denoting an aspect of a verb expressing the beginning of an action, typically one occurring of its own accord.

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