Dear Yong Peng

Thank you for your interest. I have some more comments.

> The dynamic nature of the transitivity of Pali verbs as they take
> various forms is a little advance for me now.

It is not your fault; a good dictionary should have been able to explain
such facts but simply we don't have good enough ones --- just imagine
having to use the first edition of PED for more than 100 years! But I
hope Dr. Cone's dictionary will be much more helpful when it comes to be
completed.

> Now I know gacchati is transitive, while gaccha is transitive and can
> be intransitive in
> some cases.

It isn't accurate yet. To explain this, we must go back to fundamentals.

How Pali verbs (I mean conjugated types) are formed?

The standard format would be: root + suffix (conjugational sign,
passive sign, causal sign) + verbal ending.

Now, for the sake of explanation, let's divide this format into two
stages as follows:

root + suffix ---> verbal stem
verbal stem + verbal ending ---> verb

Now let's see how these components are used in the actual language.

A root in Pali (or Sanskrit) denotes a sort of action. For instance:
"gam" means "to go"; "daa" means "to give". Prefixes (upasaggas) are
modifiers of roots. For instance: "anu + gam" comes to mean "to follow,
to go after".

And the *transitivity* properly belongs to this stage."Gam" is
transitive in some contexts but intransitive in others. However,
"anugam" is certainly transitive.

At the stage of a verbal stem, we can define the voice (Active, Passive,
etc.) and causality. For instance, from the root "han" we get different
verbal stems:

"hana"; active voice meaning "to kill"
"ha~n~na"; passive / absolute voice meaning "to be killed"
"hanaapaya"; active voice plus causality meaning "to cause (someone) to
kill"
"hanaapiiya"; passive / absolute voice plus causality meaning "to be
caused to kill"

At the stage of an actual verb, we can define the tense / mood, person
and number. For instance, from the stem "gaccha", we get:

"gacchati": 3rd pers. present tense, singular, meaning "(He / She / It)
goes".
"gacchaami": 1st pers. present tense, singular, meanin "(I) go"
"gacchaama": 1st pers. present tense, plural, meanin "(We) go"
"gacchissati": 3rd pers. future tense, singular, meaning "(He / She /
It) will go

If you go back to the examples we have discussed, you would find that
"gacchati" and "gaccha" are formed from the same verbal stem "gaccha" ,
and consequently from the same root "gam"; they are different only in
the tense and person since "gacchati" is 3rd pers. present tense,
singular while "gaccha" is 2nd pers. imperative mood, singular.

Therefore, the only conclusion we can draw from these examples is that
the root "gam" is transitive in some contexts and intransitive in
others, no more.

with metta

Ven. Pandita