What is the valency of common academic verbs?

This third and final chapter in our short reader on verb transitivity deals with determining the valency of the most common academic verbs so that students can use these verbs within their own academic presentations and essays. Remembering back to Chapters 1 and 2, valency (also known as transitivity) is the determination of how many arguments a verb grammatically requires. Such arguments may be subjects, direct objects, indirect objects and oblique objects. Because not all verbs are able to take objects, and those that can may be limited to the type and number of objects they take, it’s important that we group these verbs into their four valency categories so that they can be more easily and accurately used by learners of the English language.

What are the 150 most common verbs?

accept, achieve, adapt, advance, affect, allocate, allow, alter, analyse, appear, argue, arise, assert, assess, associate, assist, assume, attempt, avoid, base, benefit, cause, choose, cite, claim, clarify, classify, combine, compare, compete, concentrate, conclude, conduct, connect, consider, consist, constitute, construct, contrast, contribute, correspond, decline, define, demonstrate, depend, describe, design, determine, develop, differ, discuss, display, distinguish, effect, eliminate, emerge, enable, encounter, encourage, enhance, ensure, evaluate, evolve, examine, exceed, exemplify, expand, explain, express, facilitate, favour, focus, form, formulate, function, generate, highlight, identify, illustrate, imply, improve, include, increase, indicate, influence, interpret, introduce, investigate, involve, isolate, lead, limit, locate, maintain, measure, neglect, note, obtain, occur, outline, overcome, participate, perceive, possess, predict, present, prevent, produce, prove, provide, publish, pursue, quote, receive, reduce, reflect, regard, reinforce, relate, remain, remove, replace, report, represent, reproduce, resolve, respond, restrict, result, retain, reveal, select, separate, show, solve, specify, state, strengthen, stress, study, submit, suggest, summarise, support, tend, transform, treat, undermine, undertake, vary

Which academic verbs are intransitive?

adapt, advance, appear, argue, choose, compete, concentrate, contribute, evolve, focus, function, increase, occur, participate, reflect, remain, result, strengthen, tend

“The bacteria quickly adapted (to its new environment).”

“The results did indeed develop (as predicted).”

“Something unusual emerged (from the results).”

“It increased (at a phenomenal rate).”

“All researchers should participate.”

With only 15/150 verbs being intransitive, this is not a common verb type in academic writing. The usual structure for intransitives has been included in the diagram below for your reference. Don’t forget, however, that optional adjuncts such as ‘quickly’ or ‘quicker than expected’ may also be included: