Yeah, those were some of the examples given, but even ‘to give’ is ditransitive: ‘I give X to A’ involves a direct object (X) and an indirect object (A).
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That might have been it! I only knew hiragana at that point in the course.
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I think that one thing to keep in mind with how things are named is that grammar is not the language itself - it is a mental model that helps us better understand language. I’m not a linguist, but I do TA undergraduate courses in Communication studies and I see this mistake all the time: students will say “the sender-receiver model is making us think x.” No, the model is not doing anything. People out there in the world are doing things, the model is just helping us understand and describe what is happening. It might seem like unnecessary nitpicking, but by realizing the difference, then that means that the model can change.
It also means that a model might not necessarily be right or wrong: Some models are certainly better than others, but different models can be useful for different situations. This is even true in science! In physics you can model light as both a wave and a particle and one is not a better model than another: it depends on what you are trying to do.
From a linguist’s perspective, I suspect that treating grammatical terms as large umbrellas helps emphasize that there are similarities in how languages operate (allowing you to do cross-language comparisions), with the implicit assumption that just because we are calling them the same thing, doesn’t mean they operate in exactly the same way.
By contrast, for learners, using the same terms can lead to them assuming that because you are calling them the same thing they do function exactly the same way. Sometimes using unfamiliar terms can be a good strategy to help prevent those assumption. In Japanese the Spoken Language Eleanor Jordan does this by using terms like “verbals” and “adjectival nouns” for precisly this reason (I will note that the author is herself a linguist). CureDolly also does this by insisting that “there is no conjugation in Japanese”: I don’t think it is good linguistics (from a linguistics perspective, it’s just that Japanese exhibits a different type of conjugation) and that she takes an unecessarily hard line on this, but you can make the argument that it is good pedagogy.
In the case of self move/other move, it helps that those literal translations are highly evocative sounding rather then the rather abstract terms transitive vs intransitive - especially considering that native English speakers typically don’t get taught a lot gramatical terms in school (especially compared to French speakers, I have realized!). The Japanese terms for i and na adjectives are not nearly as evocative, so using them is less useful. I personally like “adjectival nouns” for na adjectives, as it is emphasises the fact that they grammatically function as nouns, but am fine with talking about conjugation in Japanese and using “verb” (instead of verbal) . I’m mostly agnostic about self-move other move. But that’s what work for me.
As for how grammar can change: I witnessed such a change while I was in school. Did you know that in French there is the distinction between new and traditional grammar? (I did all my schooling in French) Nothing changed in how things were conjugated, just how the language was analyzed and labeled with the new grammar better aligning with how modern linguistics understands French. And this change didn’t happen in the 1800s - the shift happened in Canada in the late 90s and early 2000s! So I started with one model of the language being taught in school and ended with another. For what it is worth, I think that “new” French grammar makes much more sense and has better equiped me to learn other languages. It meant that when I took a linguistic course in syntax as an elective in my undergrad, I felt that I already knew most of the terminology. But traditional grammar was never “wrong” - its just not as useful of a model.
Interestingly some of the changes were precisily in what is considered an indirect objects - here is a pdf (in french) for those who are interested. Note as well that this reflects what is taught in primary/secondary schools, and is not just some linguists talking among themselves. I even did the sentence diagramming in high school.
In any case, TLDR: grammar is a model attempting to describe a living and breathing entity called language, and different models/labels can be useful for different reasons.
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Damn I did not expect so many replies. It’s gonna take me a while to go through them. I’ve read a few and there are great explanations and links! Thanks again 
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Yes, this has turned into one of the most interesting threads in this forum! Thanks to all contributors who have invested so much time in their thoughtful and educational posts!
Yeah, Minna no Nihongo is similar! It uses i-adjective and na-adjective in the translation text, and those are basically direct translations of what the Japanese text uses: (photos under the cut). MNN wasn't written specifically for English speakers in mind, so it's not a case of western grammar concepts getting falsely applied to Japanese. It's a little simplified, sure, but that's fine at this level of knowledge.
Honestly, it’s a little perplexing to me that people get so heated over which English terminology to use for Japanese grammar concepts, because just like all translation, no English term is a perfect fit anyway. As long as people understand what you’re referring to by “intransitive verb” or “na-adjective” or what have you, the terminology is fine. Understanding of the actual concepts generally comes with exposure to the language over time and experiencing how the grammar actually works in practice.
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But MnN is made for learners? な形容詞 doesn’t seem widely used in Japan. When I’ve asked Japanese speakers before about if 綺麗 is a 形容詞, they were pretty confused. I think 形容動詞 is preferred by native speakers.
Like I said though, whatever works for you is great.
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I mean, even if it’s not widely used by native speakers, な形容詞 is definitely a word that exists. Yomichan recognizes it, and it was printed in a Japanese book made by Japanese speakers for teaching their language to people whose native language might be English, Chinese, Korean, or any number of other languages. The workbook that those photos are from doesn’t even have any official translations in any language other than Japanese.
I just brought it up because some people seem to be assuming that the term na-adjective is unnaturally being applied to Japanese because it’s trying to force an English grammar concept on something that is quite different, so I’m just pointing out that at least in this case, the word used in the English supplemental text is a pretty direct equivalent to the word used in the original Japanese.
I’m just not sure why the specific English terminology matters so much? Na-adjective, denominal adjective, adjectival noun, etc. are all translations that are trying to approximate a concept we don’t really have a word for. Same with intransitive, self-move, etc. If one of those words gets you closer to understanding the concept than another word, cool, but they’re still just translations.
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Is it not because 形容詞 refers to actual adjectives (i-adjectives) and 形容動詞 to nouns that act as descriptors for other nouns, or adverbs?
Yeah, definitely agree with this.
There are also の-adjectives, sometimes treated as a separate group and a couple な-adjectives can also use either な or の when attached to a noun.
I would probably stick to 形容詞 and 形容動詞 in this case and not think too much about it, especially that there are such traps like 小さい vs 小さな and 大いに (大い is a な adjective).
EDIT:
Tobira has a section on ノ形容詞 and ナ形容詞 in chapter 8. It’s also geared towards learners. I still haven’t read it, but I’m curious now 
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I’m just not sure why the specific English terminology matters so much?
Long bouts of overthinking are basically the heart and soul of this forum 
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It’s how na adjectives like 綺麗 or 奇妙 are referred to in Japanese dictionaries big shrug
or rather the shortish hand of 名・形動
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This is precisely it.
Transitivity doesn’t work the same way in Japanese as it does in English. The same is, however, true of English and German, or Italian and Spanish. And it also applies to other categories e.g. verb tenses. And certainly, given that Japanese and English are completely unrelated, the differences are larger in this case than when languages share some common ancestry (as well as a long history of contact).
Nevertheless, the core concept of transitivity is very well studied cross-linguistically and it is, to this day, a fairly well accepted term in linguistics, including comparative linguistics, even if there is still some debate concerning how exactly it should be modelled in detail (which doesn’t change the fact that every linguistically trained person just knows roughly what these terms mean).
I don’t mind people insisting that Japanese should be understood on its own terms - every language should - but there is sometimes this impression many people have that Japanese is a weird oddball language that is completely different from anything else and cannot be compared to other languages. It’s not (except maybe the writing system which might very well be unique). Japanese has many elements that can be reasonably compared with other languages, even when they’re not exactly identical. Its core predicate structure is not that unique and weird but rather aligns roughly with the vast majority of languages, with of course, some of its unique quirks. One particular challenge of course is the topic/comment structure that doesn’t exist in European languages and the optionality of implied arguments which, in more well-known languages, is more limited (zero subject in Italian and Spanish, for example). Nevertheless, I always feel that if you were trained, say, in Latin, then trying to decode a Japanese sentence leads you down a very similar path as trying to decode a Latin one: find the main verb, find the arguments, determine their relationship to the verb, etc.
(Even something that seems rather unique, such as the て form is very similar to structures that can be found in Turkic or Dravidian languages (some linguists would call them “converbs”). Of course that doesn’t help much when you’re coming from English.)
So yes, it’s certainly worth emphasising that Japanese is in some respects very different from English and also other European languages, but I feel one can also overdo it.
And, because somebody brought it up before, linguistics is not a dead subject but there are certain terms that are more or less uncontroversially accepted even after decades of studying hundreds of different, and sometimes remarkably “strange” (from an English POV), languages and it’s simply not true that linguists don’t understand how languages like Japanese work at all when they’re using such terms as “transitivity”. People should give linguists more credit.
Incidentally, I often think that in some respects it’s not Japanese being weird, but English. I feel that certain challenges in learning Japanese disappear even if you come from, say, German. For example, the fact that many verbs in English can be both transitive and intransitive probably helps create confusion when one has to deal with translating Japanese verbs, but that’s not really a problem one has when coming from many other languages.
(I might add that there are other linguistic terms that aren’t as uncontroversial as transitivity. For example, whether something like “adjective” is a valid cross-linguistic category and, if so, if every language has them, is not as clear. Japanese “adjectives” clearly work in many instances very different from English ones.)
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I hope no one minds that I derail the linguistic discussion for a bit and ask a question on how these transitivity pairs are being tested.
Will it be a good idea that these verbs come with their corresponding particle hints, such as that their entries on WK would appear as:
(を) 欠く
(が) 付く
etc? or something like that
This suggestion likely comes from me being fed up with getting them mixed up on WK all the time, whereas when I’m reading/listening, I have no problem, since I see the particle that’s being used and can take it from there. And wouldn’t that be how we’ll be encountering these vocabularies anyway?
The Takoboto dictionary app marks their transitivity entries with the particle, so it’s not like a new idea, but idk what effects this has on actual learning.
I mean, a transitive verb takes が too, but I guess if it helps you, why not.
An alternative is to simply not bother: if you mix up a transitivity pair, you’ll probably understand it from context anyway and even if you get it wrong in writing/speaking, people would probably understand you. Given enough immersion, you will eventually remember it.
SRS is not a goal in itself but something to help you along your road to immersion. I try to not let small details like that disturb my WK progress anymore. See also: Massive Input vs SRS: the Inverse Ratio Effect | Organic Japanese with Cure Dolly
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That’s a very good take and that article you linked was so on-point with my current studies. Coincidentally (and off-topic here) I just started “massive input” recently, taking over the enormous time that I used to spend on non-WK SRS, including card-making. How crazy that this article gets linked now! It’s given me a bit of hope since I haven’t really been sure how the mass-input approach would go for me, but so far immersion has become more enjoyable.
With this in mind your point makes more sense. I shouldn’t let these transitivity pairs bother me so much as long as I get the gist and especially when I don’t have a problem with them during immersion.
Good luck wading through the amount of muck and flame that plague most online discussions of even mildly controversial topics. (What’s wrong with saying “transitive” and “intransitive”? They convey 90% of the meaning, which is as good as any translation will ever get!)
As for me, I’m stumped by the same old verb pairs as everyone else, until I learn them, but I have a technique for studying them and acquiring them quickly (and I mean really acquired, not just memorized.)
My technique consists in recalling not the infinitive form, but a small conjugated form. As the Japanese would say, 活用 = practical use, application.
For example, I have no trouble with 付く・付ける because I consider them acquired, meaning I can easily use them in everyday conversation without thinking, such as:
- 付いてる = it’s attached
- 付けていい？= may I attach it?
On the other hand, I will still fail my reviews of 欠く・欠ける because even though I can read them and I’ve memorized their general meaning, I have not acquired them yet. What I mean is, if I were in a situation where I needed to say “this is lacking” or “I’m lacking such” they would not come to me immediately.
Therefore that’s what I will focus during my reviews: coming up with tiny sentences, or rather practical conjugations, and using them in my mind.
For example:
- 欠けてる = it’s lacking
- 欠いてしまった = oops, I’ve chipped it off
As you can see, my technique does not involve entire sentences, but very short, practical conjugations, mostly of the て variety. My favorite ones are:
-
〜ている・〜てる = something is in a given situation, statically.
Always takes 自動 intransitives. ている is a very powerful conjugation, I think I’ve learned all intransitives so far using only this form. -
〜てもいい？= may I do this?
-
〜てください = please do this.
-
〜てしまった = oops, I’ve done it!
These three all take 他動 transitive, because the focus or main meaning is on somebody doing something. -
〜てある = it was left like that on purpose (by somebody)
This is sneaky, because even though it describes a static condition, it focuses on the action that was made by somebody, therefore takes the 他動. If you can use it proficiently then do it, otherwise stick to the easier forms.
And that’s how I personally learn 自動/他動詞。
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This is a great post. Thanks for sharing what you know. It seems essential to the discussion.
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