Verbs (22) - Reflexive and Ergative Verbs

Reflexive Verbs

1. Reflexive pronouns

Singular: myself, yourself, himself, herself, itself

Plural: ourselves, yourselves, themselves

Direct object သည္ verb ရဲ႕ object နဲ႔ အတူတူျဖစ္ေနတဲ့အခါ reflexive pronoun ကို transitive verb ေနာက္ကထားတယ္။

I’m teaching myself to play the piano.

Be careful with that knife. You might cut yourself.

Reflexive pronoun ေတြနဲ႔ မၾကခဏေတြ႕ရတဲ့ verbs ေတြကေတာ့-

Cut, dry, enjoy, hurt, introduce, kill, prepare, teach

Reflexive pronoun ကုိ object အျဖစ္သံုးလုိက္ရင္ အဓိပၸါယ္အနဲငယ္ေျပာင္းသြားတဲ့ verbs ေတြလဲရွိတယ္။

Amuse, apply, busy, content, behave, blame, distance, express, find, help, see

Would you like to help yourself to another drink? (Would you like to take another drink?)

I wish the children would behave themselves. (I wish the children would behave well).

He found himself lying by the side of the road. (He was surprised when he realized that he was at the side of the road).

I saw myself as a famous actor. (I imagined that I was a famous actor).

She applied herself to the job of mending the lights. (She worked very hard to mend the lights).

He busied himself in the kitchen. (He worked busily in the kitchen).

I had to content myself with a few Euros. (I had to be satisfied with a few Euros).

Enjoy ဆုိတဲ့ verb ဟာ အၿမဲတမ္း object ပါရတယ္။

We all enjoyed the party.

I really enjoyed my lunch.

Enjoy မွာ အျခား object မပါဘူးဆုိရင္ reflexive object ကုိထည့္ေပးရတယ္။

They all enjoyed. They all enjoyed themselves.

I really enjoyed. I really enjoyed myself.

ကုိယ့္အတြက္လုပ္တာေတြ ေဖာ္ျပတဲ့ verb ေတြေနာက္မွာေတာ့ reflexive pronoun ကို မသံုးရဘူး။

He washed in cold water.

He always shaved before going out in the evening.

Michael dressed and got ready for the party.

Emphasis (အေလးအနက္) ျဖစ္ေစဖို႔အတြက္ ဒီ verb ေတြကိုေတာ့ reflexive pronoun သံုးပါတယ္။

He dressed himself in spite of his injuries.

She’s old enough to wash herself.

Ergative Verbs

Transitive ေရာ intransitive ပါျဖစ္ႏုိင္တဲ့ verb ေတြကုိ ergative verb လုိ႔ေခၚပါတယ္။

Peter closed the door. (Transitive- N+V+N.)

The door closed. (Intransitive- N+V.)

I boiled a pan of water. (Transitive- N+V+N.)

The pan boiled. (Intransitive- N+V.)

2. Ergative verbs အမ်ားစုကေတာ့-

Begin, break, change, close, drop, crack, dry, end, finish, grow, improve, increase, move, open, shake, start, stop, tear, turn

I broke the glass.

I dropped the glass and it broke.

The referee blew his whistle and started the match.

The match started at 2:30.

We grew some tasty potatoes.

The potatoes were growing well.

The wind shook the trees.

The trees shook in the wind.

3. cooking နဲ႔ဆုိင္တဲ့ verb မ်ားဟာ ergative verbs ေတြပါပဲ။

Bake, boil, cook, defrost, freeze, melt, roast

You should roast the meat at 200 degree centigrade.

The meat was roasting in a hot oven.

I always defrost meat before I cook it.

I am waiting for the meant to defrost.

Melt the chocolate and pour it over the ice cream.

The chocolate was melting in a pan.

4. Vehicles (ယာဥ္) နဲ႔ပတ္သက္တဲ့ verb ေတြကလဲ တစ္ခါတစ္ရံ ergative verbs ေတြျဖစ္တတ္တယ္။

Back, crash, drive, fly, reverse, run, sail, start, stop

I’m learning to fly a plane.

The plane flew at twice the speed of sound.

He crashed his car into a tree.

His car crashed into a tree.

5. အခ်ိဳ႕ ergative verbs ေတြက noun အနဲငယ္နဲ႔သာ တြဲသံုးတယ္။

Catch: dress, coat, clothes, trousers, etc.

Fire: gun, pistol, riffle, rocket

Play: guitar, music, piano, violin, CD, DVD, etc.

Ring: bell, alarm

She caught her dress on a nail.

Her dress caught on a nail.

He fired a pistol to start the race.

A pistol fired to start the race.