Talk:Ambitransitive verb

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Ok for "the window breaks" (or "the piano plays"), although this example sounds to my French anticausative-unprone hear a rather English-Dutch-Swiss-German way-of-saying(-things).

What is your opinion about "j'te paye" meaning not "I pay [to] you" but "I pay your salary" or "I clean up my debt to you". The later sense is also be expressed with "j'te r(e)paye", but there is a long time I didn't hear it.

"I pay [to] you" is expressed by "j't'l'paye" -- or, in some regions "j't'i' paye" --, with an indefinite "l(e)" -- or "i(l)" following the regional preferance for the indefinite pronoun--. This indefinite is usually zero-marked and I don't see the reason of an explicit making, unless to admit the speaker need to distinguish between the intransitive and transitive form of "payer".

It seems that making the verb intransitive changes the semantic, is a way of saying that the the object is soo obvious that it is not even worth mentioning. To say "j'te r'paye" is to admit you have debt, while saing "j'te paye" is to amounce you have money.

An answer would be apreciated, or as we say "je-vous-le-re-rendrai", specifying the use of the verb "rendre" with a A-E-(O)-(I forbid myself to state the O because YOU know it)- valency.

AlainD