A monotransitive verb is a verb

Verb

A verb, from the Latin verbum meaning word, is a word that in syntax conveys an action , or a state of being . In the usual description of English, the basic form, with or without the particle to, is the infinitive...

 that takes two arguments: a subject

Subject (grammar)

The subject is one of the two main constituents of a clause, according to a tradition that can be tracked back to Aristotle and that is associated with phrase structure grammars; the other constituent is the predicate. According to another tradition, i.e...

 and a single direct object. For example, the verbs buy, bite, break, and eat are monotransitive in English.

Verbs are categorized in terms of transitivity

Transitivity (grammatical category)

In linguistics, transitivity is a property of verbs that relates to whether a verb can take direct objects and how many such objects a verb can take...

 (i. e. how many and which types of syntactic

Syntax

In linguistics, syntax is the study of the principles and rules for constructing phrases and sentences in natural languages....

 argument

Verb argument

In linguistics, a verb argument is a phrase that appears in a syntactic relationship with the verb in a clause. In English, for example, the two most important arguments are the subject and the direct object....

s they may cooccur

Co-occurrence

Co-occurrence or cooccurrence can either mean concurrence / coincidence or, in a more specific sense, the above-chance frequent occurrence of two terms from a text corpus alongside each other in a certain order. Co-occurrence in this linguistic sense can be interpreted as an indicator of semantic...

 with), the basic distinction being between transitive verb

Transitive verb

In syntax, a transitive verb is a verb that requires both a direct subject and one or more objects. The term is used to contrast intransitive verbs, which do not have objects.-Examples:Some examples of sentences with transitive verbs:...

s (taking two or more arguments) and intransitive verb

Intransitive verb

In grammar, an intransitive verb is a verb that has no object. This differs from a transitive verb, which takes one or more objects. Both classes of verb are related to the concept of the transitivity of a verb....

s (taking one argument). The transitive category is further divided into subclasses.

The following examples show monotransitive verbs in sentences (the direct object is in boldface):

• Yesterday, I bought a cat.
• The cat bit me!
• He broke the toothpick.
• The chef ate his own watermelon soup.

Traditionally, transitivity patterns are assigned to the verb as lexical

Lexicon

In linguistics, the lexicon of a language is its vocabulary, including its words and expressions. A lexicon is also a synonym of the word thesaurus. More formally, it is a language's inventory of lexemes. Coined in English 1603, the word "lexicon" derives from the Greek "λεξικόν" , neut...

 information, but recent research in construction grammar

Construction grammar

The term construction grammar covers a family of theories, or models, of grammar that are based on the idea that the primary unit of grammar is the grammatical construction rather than the atomic syntactic unit and the rule that combines atomic units, and that the grammar of a language is made up...

 has argued that this is actually a wrong conception, since the same verb very often appears in different contexts of transitivity. Consider:

• The man bought his wife a ring. (ditransitive
  Ditransitive verb
  In grammar, a ditransitive verb is a verb which takes a subject and two objects which refer to a recipient and a theme. According to certain linguistics considerations, these objects may be called direct and indirect, or primary and secondary...
  
  )
• Stop me before I buy again. (intransitive; antipassive
  Antipassive voice
  The antipassive voice is a verb voice that works on transitive verbs by deleting the object. This construction is similar to the passive voice, in that it decreases the verb's valency by one - the passive by deleting the subject , the antipassive by deleting the object The antipassive voice...
  
   construction)
• The cat bit him in the arm. (complex transitive)
• Can you bite me a piece of banana? (ditransitive)
• The vase broke. (intransitive; anticausative construction)
• Can you break me some toothpicks for my model castle? (ditransitive)
• She broke the toothpick into tiny pieces. (complex transitive)
• Not now, I'm eating. (intransitive; antipassive construction)

Thus, in grammatical construction theory

Construction grammar

The term construction grammar covers a family of theories, or models, of grammar that are based on the idea that the primary unit of grammar is the grammatical construction rather than the atomic syntactic unit and the rule that combines atomic units, and that the grammar of a language is made up...

, monotransititivy is assigned to argument structure constructions, which are schematic types of grammatical construction

Grammatical construction

In linguistics, a grammatical construction is any syntactic string of words ranging from sentences over phrasal structures to certain complex lexemes, such as phrasal verbs....

, rather than to the verb.

Transitivity is roughly synonym

Synonym

Synonyms are different words with almost identical or similar meanings. Words that are synonyms are said to be synonymous, and the state of being a synonym is called synonymy. The word comes from Ancient Greek syn and onoma . The words car and automobile are synonyms...

ous with subcategorization

Subcategorization frame

In syntax, a subject within linguistics, the subcategorization frame of a word is defined to be the number and types of syntactic arguments that it co-occurs with...

.