I recently learnt that every verb in Japanese has inherent transitivity, and that particles, which tend to get omitted, help indicate the transitivity of a verb. Specifically, verbs marked with「を」are transitive, and those with 「が」or「に」are intransitive.
Now, the question is that since 上る（のぼる）is intransitive in nature, why do example sentences, like the ones shown below, mark it direct object marker 「を」?
Confliction in information isn’t generally good for mental morale of mine.
1)「階段を上りたくありません」
“I don’t want to climb the stairs.”
“Manner of motion” verbs, such as those you mentioned, and many others (あるく, はしる, まわる, およぐ, etc), which describe the manner in which a thing moves, can take を, but this を is not marking a direct object, so they are still intransitive.
Notice definition #1 is the direct object marker you are familiar with, but this is definition #3. There are more definitions below that I cut off as well.
Hmm~ I can’t seem to find her older, stand-alone episode about transitivity on her channel any more for some reason, but~
Disregarding the grating voice filter, I found this way of approaching transitivity extremely illuminating. There are full and accurate subtitles you can turn on if you don’t want to just listen.
Like I said, she used to also have a stand-alone video on the topic, and I don’t remember a 100% if this video will refer back a lot to other stuff she taught in that playlist. But even without having gone through the playlist, this should explain a whole lot!
