#intransitive

～でも · ～てん · ～のか grammar

Noun + でも、～てん as a contraction、のか for internal questioning — plus a transitive/intransitive pair. Example from Jujutsu Kaisen.

死体でも埋まってんのか？ → Is there a dead body buried here or something?

死体 (したい) = dead body; corpse

埋まる (うまる) = to be buried; to be filled in [intransitive; takes が]

Context: Megumi is investigating the rugby field where curses have been appearing. He's wondering what could be causing it.

Noun + でも — "or something; something like"

でも after a noun doesn't mean "but" — it means "or something; something like that." The speaker is offering an example rather than a definitive claim. Other possibilities exist; this is just one that comes to mind.

死体でも = a dead body or something (maybe a dead body, or who knows what else)

コーヒーでも飲む？ = Want some coffee or something? 本でも読もう = I'll read a book or something. (just something to do)

～てん — contraction of ている

てん is a casual spoken contraction of ている. It appears in informal speech and manga dialogue.

埋まってん = 埋まっている = is buried; has been buried (resultative state)

～のか — internal questioning; surprised verification

のか is a question marker that signals the speaker is processing something unexpected — reasoning aloud or verifying a belief against what they're seeing. It's not a neutral question; it carries a nuance of "is this really the case?" or "so that's what's going on?"

死体でも埋まってんのか？ → Is there actually a dead body buried here or something?

Megumi didn't expect this many curses at this level. のか expresses that internal recalibration — he's not asking someone else, he's working it out himself.

埋まる vs. 埋める — intransitive vs. transitive

死体が埋まっている → a dead body is buried (intransitive; no active doer specified) 誰かが死体を埋めた → someone buried the body (transitive; active doer present)

Lingthusiasm Episode 29: The verb is the coat rack that the rest of the sentence hangs on 

Some sentences have a lot of words all relating to each other, while other sentences only have a few. The verb is the thing that makes the biggest difference: it’s what makes “I gave you the book” sound fine but “I rained you the book” sound weird. Or on the flip side, “it’s raining” is a perfectly reasonable description of a general raining event, but “it’s giving” doesn’t work so well as some sort of general giving event. How can we look for patterns in the ways that verbs influence the rest of the sentence? 

In this episode, your hosts Lauren Gawne and Gretchen McCulloch get enthusiastic about a new metaphor for how verbs relate to the other words in a sentence -- a verb is like a coat rack and the nouns that it supports are like the coats that hang on it. Admittedly, it creates some slightly odd-looking coat racks that you might not actually want in your home, but as a metaphor it works quite well. (We’ll stick to linguistics rather than becoming furniture designers.) 

We also take you through a brief tour of other metaphors for verbs and sentences, including going across (aka transitivity) and molecular bonds (aka valency).  

Click here for a link to this episode in your podcast player of choice or read the transcript here

Announcements:

This month’s bonus episode is a recording from our liveshow in Melbourne, Australia, where we talk about how the internet is making English better with real audience laughter occasionally in the background! Feel like you’re in a cosy room of friendly linguistics enthusiasts by supporting Lingthusiasm on Patreon to gain access to this and 23 previous bonus episodes. 

Internet language is also the topic of Gretchen’s book, Because Internet, which is now officially available for preorder! You can show the publisher that people are interested in fun linguistics books and have a delightful treat waiting for you on July 23, 2019 by preordering it here!

Here are the links mentioned in this episode:

Episode 9: The bridge between words and sentences - Constituency

The basics of arguments (Superlinguo)

Word order (Superlinguo)

Dummy pronouns (Wikipedia)

Novel verbs: to internet (All Things Linguistic)

To verb (All Things Linguistic)

Transitivity (Wikipedia)

Valency changing (Wikipedia)

Causative (Wikipedia)

Benefactive (Wikipedia)

Passive (Wikipedia)

Spray/load alternation (All Things Linguistic)

You can listen to this episode via Lingthusiasm.com, Soundcloud, RSS, Apple Podcasts/iTunes, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts. You can also download an mp3 via the Soundcloud page for offline listening.

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You can help keep Lingthusiasm ad-free, get access to bonus content, and more perks by supporting us on Patreon.

Lingthusiasm is on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, and Tumblr. Email us at contact [at] lingthusiasm [dot] com

Gretchen is on Twitter as @GretchenAMcC and blogs at All Things Linguistic.

Lauren is on Twitter as @superlinguo and blogs at Superlinguo.

Lingthusiasm is created by Gretchen McCulloch and Lauren Gawne. Our senior producer is Claire Gawne, our editorial manager is Emily Gref, our editorial producers are A.E. Prévost and Sarah Dopierala, and our music is ‘Ancient City’ by The Triangles.

Pluralizing suffix ら & (in)transitive verbs

Naruto: お前らマダラは俺たちが止める

Obito: お前らだと

お前ら (おまえら)

おまえ alone means “you.” Very popular in the anime world, not so popular in real life.

ら is a pluralizing suffix that in this case can be translated as “you guys” (you and the other Madara). I think ら is a bit rough. Male speech.

In Czech, the object of a verb is typically in the accusative case. For example, “číst knihu” (to read a book). „Dnes jsem koupil knihu” -” Today, I bought a book.” Here, “kniha” (book) is the object of the verb “koupit” (to buy) and it takes the accusative form “knihu.“ The “basic”, nominative form is “kniha”. So, when using verbs in Czech, it’s necessary to consider the case of the object and…