Rare verbs in Japanese which are both transitive and intransitive

Today's grammar lesson is about "labile" verbs

Did it ever occur to you that it is slightly odd that haru can be both transitive and intransitive?

Normally, of course, in Japanese we would expect to have related but different words for the transitive and intransitive cases. Consider:

• 会議が始まる (kaigi ga hajimaru, the meeting starts

• 会議を始める (kaigi wo hajimeru, start the meeting)

The grammarians call these paired verbs, or in Japanese 有対動詞 (yūtai dōshi).　Japanese has countless such paired verbs.

But you can use haru in both ways!

• ひもを張る (himo wo haru, stretch out the rope, transitive)

• はらが張る (hara ga haru, lit. “stomach is stretched”, I’m stuffed, intransitive)

Scholars call this type of word labile, or sometimes “ergative”. In such cases, what would be the subject in the intransitive form becomes the object in the transitive form. Such forms are extraordinarily common in English: think “I broke the vase” vs. “The vase broke.” It’s most often encountered for words relating to something changing, and also often with cooking: “the water boiled” vs. “I boiled the water”.

But such words are vanishingly rare in Japanese. Can you think of one? The only other obvious one is 開く (hiraku, open):

戸が開く (the door opens)
戸を開く (someone opens the door)

Such words can also be called “ambitransitive”, or “ergative”, or “causatively alternating”.

In Japanese, these words are called 能格動詞 (nōkaku dōshi). Although very rare in native Japanese, they are also seen with Chinese compounds:

• パターンが生成する (a pattern forms)

• パターンを生成する (forms a pattern)

Can you think of other Chinese compound that work this way?¹

1. 停止 (teishi, stop) is one.