This lesson is part of the Beginner Chamorro learning path.

If we are getting started in making basic action sentences in Chamorro, a common starting place for learners is making transitive statements which are sentences like “I drank the coffee” or “She prepared the food.” Before we get started with making these types of sentences, let’s learn a little more about the verbs used, which are called transitive verbs. In this post we’ll go over some practical ways to understand what transitive verbs are and the features of transitive sentences that matter the most in Chamorro.

If you are at a more intermediate level, check out my post on The Man- Prefix for Transitive Verbs as it has similar content but expands to understanding how to use the MAN- prefix with transitive verbs. Happy studying!

Contents

1. Introduction to Chamorro Verbs
2. Key Parts of Action Sentences with Objects
3. The Different Types of Objects
   1. Understanding Specific vs. Non-Specific Objects
   2. Why Are Objects Important in Chamorro?
4. How Do I Know If a Verb Is Transitive?
5. Study Resource: Review These Concepts on Quizlet!
6. Summary
7. ➡️ Keep Learning! Continue to the Next Lesson
8. Documentation & Further Study
   1. References
   2. Further Reading

Introduction to Chamorro Verbs

We can understand Chamorro to have 3 major categories of verbs. As learners, these categories help us learn how to use a verb in a sentence, because each category follows the same general patterns.

We’ll go over these categories briefly:

A transitive verb is an action that we do to someone or something else. For example:

• I read the newspaper.
• I cleaned the house.
• I remembered her name.

These three examples remind us that when we read, clean, or remember, we must do those actions to something. This is what makes those actions transitive-we are transferring the action to someone or something else.

In the grammar texts, the someone or something we do the actions to are referred to as objects. And whoever is doing the action will be referred to as the subject.

This is different from intransitive verbs, which are actions we do without needing to do them to others. For example:

• I walked.
• She screamed.
• We jumped.

In those sentences, the person doing the action (I, She, We) is not doing the action to anybody else. Essentially, there is no object, just the person doing the action.

The final verb category are just all the other verbs that don’t fit into the other two. This is a small list of verbs that use their own particular patterns.

This lesson will go into more depth about transitive verbs.

Key Parts of Action Sentences with Objects

When we use transitive verbs in sentences, we are making what the grammar books call transitive sentences. For our purposes, we just want to remember that these sentences have the following 3 parts:

1. They have a Doer (aka: the subject) who is doing the action
2. The Action being done
3. The Someone or Something that the action is being done to (aka: the object)

Let’s practicing identifying these components with some example sentences in English. Try to identify the doer, action, and objects in the following:

• I read the book.
• You washed the car.
• The woman ate a sandwich.

Now let’s identify the pieces together:

Sentence	Doer	Action	Object
I read the book.	I	Read	The book
You washed the car.	You	Washed	The car
The woman ate a sandwich.	The woman	Ate	A sandwich

Objects Matter More in Chamorro: A key difference between English and Chamorro with sentences like these is that a sentence will be structured differently depending upon the object. The next section will go into more depth about this.

The Different Types of Objects

When we talk about objects, we can understand them to fall into two different categories:

1. Specific Objects
2. Non-Specific Objects

Within non-specific objects, I also like to include a sub-category that I call Implied, Non-Specific Objects.

In the grammar books, you’ll see specific objects called definite objects and non-specific objects called indefinite objects. Let’s go through each of these terms and unpack what they mean:

Specific Objects are things like the apple, the car, the coffee, my child, your name, this coffee, that water bottle. Even using the word “it” as your object is specific, like in the sentence “I washed it.” The idea is that we have an established, mutual context for knowing which object we are talking about.

Non-Specific Objects are things like an apple, a car, some coffee, a child, starfruit, books. The idea is that we don’t have an established, mutual context where we both understand which objects we’re talking about. Or we are talking in general, rather than referring to particular people or things.

Implied, Non-Specific Objects are objects that occur in sentences like I read. I cleaned. I wrote. At first glance, it appears that these sentences have no objects. But the objects are still there because I had to have read something, cleaned something and written something. Those somethings (objects) were still acted upon, even if we didn’t state them. Instead of being stated, they were implied.

Even if we don’t state an object explicitly, the transitive verb is still acting on something. Remember that a transitive verb needs to do its action to an object in order to be complete, even if the object is not stated.

Understanding Specific vs. Non-Specific Objects

To further cement our understanding of specific versus non-specific objects, let’s compare some sentences in the table below:

Specific Object	Non-Specific Object	Non-Specific Object
I watched the movie.	I watched a movie.	I watched something.
I read the books.	I read some books.	I read (something).
I bought it.	I bought starfruit.	I bought something.
I rented the car.	I rented a car.	I rented something.
I wrote the letter.	I wrote a letter.	I wrote (something).

Why Are Objects Important in Chamorro?

In Chamorro, whether an object is specific or non-specific actually determines how our sentence is structured. Our action words will take different forms and our word order will change depending upon the object.

This is very different from English, where action sentences take the same word order, regardless of the object. Let’s look at an example to visually see the differences between English and Chamorro:

I read the book.	I read a book.
Hu taitai i lepblu.	Manaitai yu’ lepblu.

In the English sentences, the only difference was changing “the” to “a”. But in Chamorro, we needed to use a different pronoun group, the word order changed, and the verb also changed. For those of us used to an English word order, this can feel very complicated.

For the Beginner Chamorro series on this website, we’ll focus patterns for making the first sentence type: Hu taitai i lepblu. This matches the word order we are already familiar with from English, which often makes it easy for beginners to get started. But please note that this is only one of the many different types of patterns we can use in Chamorro.

How Do I Know If a Verb Is Transitive?

Since the verb type can impact how we structure our thoughts in Chamorro, it’s helpful to know if a verb falls into the transitive category or not.

There are currently two options for figuring out if a verb is transitive or not:

1. Chamorro-English Dictionary by Donald M. Topping, Pedro M. Ogo, and Bernadita C. Dungca: Any word with a number “1” after it can be used as a transitive verb.
2. The Revised and Updated Chamorro-English Dictionary: This dictionary is freely available online at https://natibunmarianas.org/chamorro-dictionary/. If an entry has the abbreviation vt. right after the word, then it’s a transitive verb.

💡Study Tip: If you are unsure about how to use a verb in a sentence, look for example sentences that use the word. I recommend starting with Spoken Chamorro and The Revised and Updated Chamorro-English Dictionary, because these have plenty of example sentences.

Study Resource: Review These Concepts on Quizlet!

If you want extra review and practice with the concepts in this lesson, practice with this Quizlet Deck as a supplementary study tool.

Summary

In this lesson, we learned about Chamorro verbs and focused on the most important concepts for beginners to know about Transitive Verbs (actions that are done to someone or something else). Specifically, we learned the following:

• The difference between transitive verbs and intransitive verbs
• The key parts of action sentences that have objects
• Understanding the difference between specific objects and non-specific objects
• How the type of object impacts how we structure our thoughts in Chamorro

➡️ Keep Learning! Continue to the Next Lesson

When you are ready, click the link below to continue to the next lesson, where we’ll practice how to make past tense sentences with these verbs:

How to Say “I Drank The Coffee” in Chamorro – Talking in Past Tense With Transitive Verbs

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Documentation & Further Study

References

Topping, D. M., & Dungca, B. C. Chamorro Reference Grammar (PALI Language Texts―Micronesia). University of Hawaii Press, 1973.

Further Reading

Topping, D. M., & Dungca, B. C. “Transitive Verbs.” In Chamorro Reference Grammar, 84-87. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1973.

Topping, D. M., & Dungca, B. C. “man- Indefinite Object Marker.” In Chamorro Reference Grammar, 186. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1973.

Topping, D. M., & Dungca, B. C. “man- Plural Subject Marker.” In Chamorro Reference Grammar, 186-187. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1973.

Topping, D. M., & Dungca, B. C. “Plural of Intransitive Verbs and Adjectives.” In Chamorro Reference Grammar, 232-234. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1973.

Topping, D. M., & Dungca, B. C. “DEFINITE-INDEFINITE OBJECTS.” In Chamorro Reference Grammar, 239-242. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1973.