I've noticed (through much frustration) that many 自～／他～ pairs have "opposite"
forms; particularly with the ~u and ~eru types. For example, 焼く・焼ける are
opposite from 開く・開ける.

> 焼く （他） － パン **を** 焼く ("Bake bread")  
>  焼ける （自）－ パン **が** ちょうどよく焼けた ("The bread was baked just right")
>
> 開く （自） － ドア **が** ひとりでに開いた！怖いでしょう！ ("The door opened by itself! Isn't that
> creepy?")  
>  開ける （他）－ 彼女のためにドア **を** 開けてあげる ("I open doors for my girlfriend")

Is there any logical reason that some pairs like these have "opposite"
forms??? Or is it just to piss off the people trying to learn them??
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2011-06-18T15:45:49.443
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verbs transitivity morphology
自～／他～ペア：逆の形 -- Transitive/Intransitive pairs: opposite forms
<http://www.csse.monash.edu.au/~jwb/ti_list.html> Has a good list of them, in
case you wanted to see them at a glance.

Nothing I could find gave a good reason for it. Probably the language just
evolved organically, as they tend to do.

Of course, linguists will try to explain anything, so I'm not surprised that
Japanese paper is so hard to digest.

Personally, I wouldn't worry about it and just learn the words in context.
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2011-06-23T14:28:05.260
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Re: organic evolution, I note that Shogakukan's comprehensive JA-JA _Kokugo
Dai Jiten Dictionary_ lists most (maybe all?) of these verbs as having
originally been both transitive and intransitive. I suspect the different
conjugations ( _ichidan_ vs. _nidan_ ) evolved as a way of being more
specific.

By way of comparison, there are verbs in English that are both transitive or
intransitive depending on context: consider _begin_ or _hang_ or _stop_.
English and other Germanic languages also have vaguely similar pairs that
differ by the core vowel, which changes depending on whether it's transitive
or intransitive: consider _lie_ , _lay_ or _sit_ , _set_. English grammar has
certain requirements of subject-object word order and the explicit presence of
subject and object that clarify the situation even for the verbs that don't
have a vowel change to indicate transitivity ( _the test **began_** , _I
**began** the test_, etc.), whereas Japanese does not, making transitivity
potentially very ambiguous without some other means of specifying a difference
in sense. The _ichidan_ to _nidan_ shift may have evolved as such a way of
being specific, perhaps in a way similar to the vowel shift in certain verb
pairs in Germanic languages.

Given the scattershot nature of the original verbs (where two-mora verb forms
could be either transitive or intransitive, depending on the individual verbs
themselves, such as transitive 焼{や}く vs. intransitive 開{あ}く as in your example
pair), and given also the presence of verbs like つく that still exhibit
ambiguity (modern つく could still be either transitive or intransitive, as in
突く _to poke something, to stab something_ vs. 着く _to arrive_ ), learning
whether _-u_ or _-eru_ is transitive or intransitive appears to be one of
those areas of the language where there isn't any systemic set of rules, and
instead you'll just have to learn the verbs over time.
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2014-05-27T18:05:39.160
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