Exploring Transitivity Alternations across Dialects: A Preliminary Approach

Even though the weight of classical conceptions of transitivity is still sensed, current trends in the study of such notion have revealed that clear-cut classifications of verbs as either transitive or intransitive should be abandoned. Indeed, it has been argued that far from belonging to closed sets, verbs can show transitive or intransitive uses depending on the context and the intention they are used with. The aim of this paper is to throw some light on the workings of transitivity alternations of this sort in two major varieties of the English language, namely, British English and American English.