Anonymous  +  570025 Wed, 24 Sep 08 10:25 PM I am struggling to fully understand what is meant by a 'transitive' verb. As far as I have been able to grasp it thus far, a verb is transitive if it needs an object to act on. So in; "The man ate the food" 'ate' is transitive, because there has to be something that he ate.  However if we take; "The train arrived in London" 'arrived' seems to be often described as intransitive in this context.  But why cannot 'London' be seen as the object in this sentence?  Afterall, the action of arriving is being done on the object London, or am I just hopelessly confused about what 'object' means?  I can see other contexts wherein 'arrived' appears more clearly intransitive, such as; "The train arrived ten minutes late" But I want to be clear about whether "arrives in the station" or "arrives on my desk" can be seen as transitive uses of the verb.  It would be much appreciated if someone could kindly clarify this for me. Thanks. Anonymous Verbs

	Kooyeen  +  570028 Wed, 24 Sep 08 10:33 PM Hi, the train doesn't do anything to London. It does something "in" London. That's where the fact happens, just the location. The train arrives. Where? In London. As far as I know, transitive verbs are not followed by prepositions or adverbs that come between the verb and the object. It's just VERB + OBJECT, with no prepositions or adverbs in between. I ate an apple. I ate in the kitchen. I ate too much. I ate when I arrived home. Only "an apple" is the object of "ate" used transitively, all the others are used intransitively and followed by adverbs, conjunctions, prepositions introducing an adverbial phrase (I hope it's called that way), etc. Kooyeen Joined on Thu, Dec 22 2005 Italy Senior Member 4,969 Parental Advisory / Explicit Posts Verbs, Prepositions, Adverbs

	CalifJim  +  570131 Thu, 25 Sep 08 06:26 AM   Anonymous “why cannot 'London' be seen as the object in this sentence?” Because nothing happens to London!  When the man eats the food, he acts upon the food; something happens to the food.  London just happens to be the place where the action of arriving took place. The man ate the food in London doesn't have two objects, for example. Nor does The man threw the paper into the wastebasket. CJ  CalifJim Joined on Mon, Aug 2 2004 California Veteran Member 22,395 "There are no facts, only interpretations" - Nietzsche