A folk Tale (tygerofdanyte) wrote in linguaphiles,
A folk Tale
tygerofdanyte
linguaphiles

Transitive/intransitive verbs and sentence strangeness

I recently used the phrase "Glad I could amuse" in writing.

I was immediately struck by the fact that amuse should be a transitive rather than an intransitive verb.

Am I wrong in that amuse is a transitive rather than an intransitive verb? It's obvious workings show it as an intransitive verb, but I can't get it out of my head that it should be a transitive verb.

Granted in the above example, the active verb is "could" rather than amuse. If that sentence had to be rewritten -- "Glad, I amuse you" would work as well.

Now onto the second part of the matter, why does the sentence in itself look wrong?

Glad I could amuse.

I'm not the strongest on actual sentence construction, as all my teachers were either absent for that section or skipped over that as I grew up.

In my mind, the proper sentence should be either I'm glad that i could amuse. or I'm glad I could amuse you.

Is my sentence slang/dialectical? because I seem to have skipped the original verb and the main subject. The original verb would have been are (as am in I'm)
~~

If this post seems completely off the wall or not organized, I do apologize.
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