@objectless verb

Some roots always have objects, and some never have objects.

The examples in page laHkarmaNic... always have objects. If you cook you always cook something, if you see you always see something, and if you get you always get something. Verb roots of this sort are called transitive verbs in English, and /karmaka verbs in Sanskrit.

Now, there are some verbs in English that can never take an object, like sleep, sit, walk, or dine. You cannot sleep something, sit something, walk something, or dine something. You may sleep on a bed, or sleep for an hour, sit on a chair, walk in a forest, or dine on oysters, but that's another story. Sentences like "what do you dine?" and "oysters are dined by me" just aren't English.

There are also some Sanskrit roots that never take any object. Those are called /akarmaka roots or objectless roots, because they have no /karma (object). Some examples are As आस् "sit", svap स्वप् "sleep", /zIG "sleep, lie down".

Rule laHkarmaNic... says that /akarmaka roots usually show the doer, as in —

carati rAjA चरति राजा "the king is walking"

carati चरति "(he / she / it) is walking" (doer must be singular and third person)

but if you want you can make them show nothing.

In that case, you must add /ta to the verb, like this —

car चर् + nothingshowing /ta → !**caryate चर्यते

as in

caryate चर्यते "walking takes place", "someone is walking"

The verb in this case always takes /ta, regardless of the number of doers and their person.

If you want to add back the doers to the sentence, it must have third, by bhAvakarmaNoH —

caryate rAjJA चर्यते राज्ञा "the king is walking"

caryate rAjabhiH चर्यते राजभिः "the kings are walking"