Notion of transitivity in linguistic theories

Abstract

The notion of transitivity has been defined in different ways depending upon the fact that it is defined formally or semantically, or functionally. In a formal or traditional way, transitivity refers to a construction consisting of a verb and an object that modifies the verb, that is, a transitive construction. Semantically, transitivity expresses an impact performed by the agent, which leads a change of state undergone by the patient. In SFG, transitivity is conceptualized as a set of choices representing ideational meanings, or in other words, it corresponds to linguistic representations of experiences or external world knowledge. A linguistic representation constitutes a choice that reflects the speaker’s internal world consisting of feelings, thought or perception on the external world.