"fall"....a transitive verb?

[재홍]

Today one of my students came up to me and asked me this question. I couldn't give her the explanations that she had expected from me. Anyway, this is the question.

"In 1996, the amount of venture capital fell 53% from the previous year, to $202 million."

The above sentence is one of the sentences of the text, Question 43 of 1998 KSAT.

She told me she thought that "fall" was always an intransitive verb, and "by" was missing in that sentence. As a matter of fact, that's exactly what I thought.

I've thougtht that "fall" is always used as this sentence pattern: "something fell by 53%"

I need some explanations. Help me, teachers!!

[유진승]

재홍. In this case, there is no point trying to force a distinction between vt. and vi. We have to ask ourselves why it is that we need to distinguish them. Do the natives distinguish them everytime they use verbs? Cetainly not. How about "go this way"? "Go" is normally considered vi. So is this

[유진승]

sentence wrong and do we have to say "go BY this way"? Or shall we say that "this way" here is used as an adverb not noun? This is a pointless talk. The best way is to accept that language is not always sharp and clear and accept its natural ambiguity.

[유진승]

I explain this at length in 티끌공. For your students, the best way is to change their grammar-oriented mindset by showing similar examples like go this way. You will find some in my columns as well.

[유진승]

The point is, such cases can be seen as either way, vi or vt. We can even say it's neither vi nor vt, and it does not matter which way we see it. The important thing is we learn how these verbs are used and be able to use them in the right context.

[재홍]

Thank you so much, Jin-seung.

[유진승]

I am realizing again and again how difficult it is to fight this ghost of hard grammatism. It is important that students be liberated from it. It is an important reason why they come to dislike English and why their English does not progress.

[눈만뜨면영어]

I've not escaped from grammatism yet. ㅠㅠ