Are all transitive verbs intransitive too?

Question

I was reading about transitive and intransitive verbs from a website and it said that some words can be both transitive and intransitive: like the verb "run" in,

1. He runs for four miles daily. (Intransitive)
   2. He runs the marathon whenever it's in town.
      (Transitive)

But then I thought of this: when we convert a sentence from active to passive voice, the object becomes the subject but the subject doesn't become the object, it becomes the object of preposition or we don't write it at all. So, the verb becomes intransitive now.

Wikipedia entry for "Intransitive Verb" agrees with me too.

In languages that have a passive voice, a transitive verb in the active voice becomes intransitive in the passive voice.

So, is it true that all, not just some, of the transitive verbs are intransitive too?

Answer 1

Perhaps you are right, but still the argument seems highly contrived. For example,

The cook kneads the dough to make bread.

With knead, the object is required. You can shift it to the passive,

The dough is kneaded (by the cook)

where the adverbial phrase is optional, but I don't know if linguists would label it is as passive transitive or intransitive, since we're still talking about an action taken on an object by an unnamed subject.

I think you're starting to get into the fine distinctions of how to label things, a subject primarily of interest to linguists (and not to everyday speakers like myself). See for example Ambitransitivity which I think is a better label for most English verbs.

Many English verbs are both transitive and intransitive, but the meaning changes if you exclude the object. For example:

He smells the brewing coffee

vs.

He smells.

Even if you change the first sentence to the passive,

The brewing coffee is smelled by him.

I think it's likely it would be labelled as passive transitive and not intransitive. For example, here's an opinion by a blogger who asserts "all passive verbs are transitive".

Meanwhile, "He smells" (which, in case it's not clear, means that his body emits an offensive odor) is without object and definitely intransitive, although possibly better labeled as reflexive (or maybe pseudo-reflexive since it's other people who are actually smelling him).

(Edit) The point of the passive tense is to allow the speaker to relate the action and the object of the action without revealing the subject. If I say the dough was kneaded, the dough is not doing its own kneading. The passive voice doesn't magically change the object into the subject. As I said from the start, that argument seems tenuous at best.

Answer 2

With greatest respect for Andrew, I am going to disagree slightly with his answer. A clear and complete distinction between intransitive and transitive verbs is that intransitive verbs never have a direct object whereas transitive verbs may, and usually do, have a direct object when in the active voice. An alternative definition is that an intransitive verb has no passive voice. These are the meanings effectively used by those who write about English grammar. It simply invites confusion to say that transitive verbs become intransitive verbs when in the passive voice because they then lack a direct object.

There are two meanings of smell. The transitive verb means, when in the active voice,that the subject of the verb receives a particular type of sensory impression attributable to something else, namely the direct object. That transitive meaning of smell can be rendered in the active or passive: Sara smells the coffee and The coffee is smelled by Sara mean precisely the same thing.

There is another meaning of smell, namely that the subject of the verb gives off an odor. As I suspect Andrew was quietly alluding to, it is said that the lexicographer Johnson did not approve of the intransitive meaning of smell and corrected a woman who said he smelled with, No, Madame, you smell [me implied]; I stink. That meaning of smell cannot be put into the passive.

English is a hard language. Using good definitions will help learners. I suspect that the OP will benefit from learning what everyone else means by transitive and intransitive.