On the intransitive usage of transitive verbs in Tooro, a Bantu language of Western Uganda

Abstract In some Bantu languages of western Uganda, we find an interesting construction in which typical transitive verbs such as “to cut (a tree),” “to bend (a wire),” “to smoke (meat),” “to tear (paper),” “to open (a door),” etc., are used intransitively, without any additional suffixes such as passive and neuter. I call this construction the syntactically intransitive construction of transitive verbs, and illustrate it with examples from Tooro, a Bantu language of western Uganda. However, two important restrictions apply regarding the use of this construction. One is that among transitive verbs, only those causing a change of state that take human agents and inanimate objects may be used intransitively, with inanimate objects being promoted to the subject position. The second restriction is that this construction may only be used with the perfective ending -ire/-ere. This last point indicates that this construction is distinct from typical labile verb constructions that, in principle, occur in all tenses, aspects and moods. The analysis of the intransitive construction of transitive verbs inevitably raises the issue of the stative nature of perfective actions.