A corpus-based study on the transitive uses of English physiological verbs

Abstract

This paper examines the transitivity potential of a group of English unergative verbs that denote physiological processes, a syntactico-semantic verbal class which has not received enough attention in the literature. Through a qualitative corpus-based analysis of 26 verbs conducted on the COCA and BNC corpora, it will be shown that the degree of transitivity of this verbal class is higher than stated in previous studies since, in addition to the cognate object construction (And burp the same garlic burps), the substance object alternation (I was breathing garlic over her), and the resultative construction (He yawned open his mouth), they have been documented in seven other transitive patterns in which they increase their valency with the addition of a non-canonical direct object: x’s way constructions (They crapped their way out?), reaction object constructions (Emma hiccups a yes), caused-motion constructions (They’d laugh me straight out of the door), preposition drop alternations (He shit the rug), the understood body-part object alternation (He snuffled his nose along his arm and sleeve), away constructions (Hatch yawned away another hour), and causative patterns (Always burp your baby when feeding time is over).