I. The Relationship between Verb and Object
When we talk about the transitive property of verb, we have to talk about the relationship between verb and object, and it is necessary to categorize the object. The semantic meaning of object is very rich, and it can express various meanings. When compiling the Dictionary of Verb Usage, Meng Qiong (1987) divided noun objects into fourteen categories according to the syntactic changes and semantic characteristics of noun objects, and Huang Boryong and Liao Xudong (2007) divided the semantic types of objects into three. In this paper, the object of "eat" is classified into the object of subject (the action or behavior is directly related to the thing, and the word "put" can be used to put the noun in advance), the object of tool (the object refers to the tool or material used for the action), and the object of manner (the object is carried out in a certain way, and "with" can be used for all of them). (the noun can be brought in front of the verb with the word "with"), object of place (the action or behavior is located or occurs somewhere), object of origin (the object indicates the source of the action), and object of doing (the object is the originator or the party involved in the action or activity; the position of the verb and the object can be reversed, and the object can be changed to the subject without changing the meaning substantially).
The transitive nature of Chinese "eat"
"Eat" is a transitive verb in Chinese, with a rich semantic meaning, which can refer to putting sucked or drunk food into the mouth and chewing and swallowing it, such as "eating "It can also refer to relying on people or things to live, such as "eating parents"; it can also refer to absorbing (liquid) and suffering, such as "eating oil" and "suffering". "to suffer"; it is also commonly used in military and chess to refer to annihilation, such as "to eat a rook". "Eat" in the sentence and the noun-like object after it constitute the semantic relationship of subject matter, instrument, mode, place and source:
(1) The southerners like to eat rice, the northerners like to eat steamed bread.
(2) Grandma likes big bowls.
(3) Eat in the cafeteria every day.
(4) He was a military general all year round and never ate small meals.
(5) Eat from the mountain, eat from the water.
(6) Ten people eat at one table.
Example (1) in the "rice" "steamed bread" is eaten by the subject, as the object of the subject, the action "eat" direct action object "". The action "eat" has a direct effect on the object "rice" and "steamed bread", and "rice" and "steamed bread" are eaten. Chinese "eat" has a wider scope, all the food that can be eaten, whether solid or liquid, can be paired with "eat", as "eat" the object of the subject. In example (2), "big bowl" is the tool for "eating", as the object of the tool, "big bowl" is the tool on which the action of "eating" depends. The "big bowl" is the tool on which the action "eat" depends. In Chinese, not all nouns can be used as the instrumental object of "eating", but are limited to nouns of food vessels, such as big bowls, small bowls, steel bowls, etc. In example (3), "big bowl" is the instrument of "eating", and "big bowl" is the instrument of "eating". In example (3), "cafeteria" is the place of "eating", as the object of place, the action of "eating" takes place in the cafeteria, which means eating in the cafeteria. Similarly, not all nouns of the place can be used as the object of the place of "eating", only nouns of the place where food is served can be used as the object of the place of "eating", e.g., you can say "to eat in the canteen Only nouns of the place where food is served can be used as the object of place of "eat", such as "eat cafeteria", "eat restaurant", etc., but not "eat school", "eat dormitory". Because "cafeteria" and "restaurant" is originally a place to provide food, the purpose of people go here is to eat, and "school" "dormitory Schools" and "dormitories" are places where people study and sleep, so they can't be used as the object of the place "to eat". In example (4), "小灶" is the way of "eating" and serves as the object of the way, which is to eat in the way of "小灶", i.e., to eat with a small stove. Only nouns that indicate the way of cooking can be used as the object of "eat", such as "eat small fry", "eat a big pot of rice", "eat a collective meal", while other nouns can be used as the object of "eat". "Other nouns are not allowed. In example (5), "mountain" and "water" are the sources of "food", and they are used as source objects, meaning that they depend on the material produced by the mountain or water to live, and these source objects usually refer to nouns that are direct or indirect sources of food. This kind of source object usually refers to the direct or indirect source of food, such as "eat friends", "eat rent", etc. In example (6), "eat" is the source of food. In example (6), "ten people" is the object of "eat" in the sentence, which is the object of "eat", meaning that ten people eat a table of food. The object of "eat" must contain a quantitative element and the noun must refer to people, such as "ten people". and the noun must refer to people, such as "ten people", not "ten rats at a table of rice".
The Chinese word for "eat" can be used with a noun object, but also with an adjective object. The first is "to suffer" and "to eat bitterly".
Third, the English "eat" of the transitive
English "eat" can be both transitive and intransitive verbs. When it is used as an intransitive verb, it is not followed by an object, but when it is used as a transitive verb, it is followed by an object:
(7) I don't eat meat.
The word "meat" in example (7) is the receptive object of the word "eat".
In example (7), "meat" is the receptive object of "eat". The English word "eat" is far less semantically rich than the Chinese word "吃". "eat" can only be used with a noun representing food as the object of the object of the object of the object of the object of the object of the object of the object of the object of the object of the object of the object of the object of the object of the object of the object of the object of the object of the object of the object of the object of the object. If you want to express the tools, places, ways and so on of Chinese "eat", you need to express it with the help of prepositions such as "in/with/by", such as "eat something with a big bowel", "eat something in the canteen". English is an object-oriented and modal language, and English verbs have a clear inflection, with the active voice for the subject to act and the passive voice for the subject to be acted, so there is no relationship between the verb and the object in English.
Fourth, conclusion
When the Chinese word "eat" is used in a sentence with a noun object, "eat" can be used directly with food, or with the tools used to serve food, or with the way food is made, or with the source of the food, etc. In English, "eat" is used to refer to the food that is eaten, but it is also used to refer to the way the food is prepared. In English, "eat" can only take a solid food noun as its object.
Compared with English, the object of "eat" in Chinese is more concise and economical, and it can be used as the object of a noun that expresses a tool, a way, a place, and so on, which eliminates the need to use prepositions to express the object.
References:
[1]J. Xu. "Transitive" Characteristics and Related Four Types of Verbs[J]. Language Research, 2001,
(3).
[2]Meng Cong. Dictionary of Verb Usage [M]. Shanghai: Shanghai Rhetoric Book Publishing House, 1987.
[3]Huang Boryong, Liao Xuandong. Modern Chinese [M]. Beijing: Higher Education Press, 2007.
(Lu Xingyan Department of Pharmacy, Tongren Vocational College, Tongren, Guizhou 554300)