Do we speak badly when we say "we have eaten suckling pig"?

Catalan grammatical tradition has been quite consistent in describing these verbs. Thus, 'desayunar' (to have breakfast), 'desayuno' (breakfast), 'comida' (lunch), 'merienda' (snack), and 'cena' (dinner) have been classified as intransitive verbs, that is, verbs that do not take a direct object. To give concrete examples: according to this description, in Catalan we don't 'dinam canelons' (we eat cannelloni) or 'sopam pez' (we eat fish); what we do is 'comer canelones para comer' (to eat cannelloni for lunch) or 'comer pescado para cena' (to eat fish for dinner). The verb that introduces the food is 'comida' (food), while the verb 'de comida' (food) serves to indicate the time or type of food. In Mallorca, this structure also coexists with another very common solution: 'dinam de canelons' (I eat cannelloni), 'sopam de pescado' (I eat fish), with a complement introduced by the preposition 'de' (of). This construction allows us to specify the contents of the meal without it being a direct object, which also fits with the traditional classification of these verbs as intransitive. Contemporary grammatical norms maintain this line. The Catalan Language Grammar of the IEC (2016), in fact, states that these verbs "do not admit this transitive use under any circumstances." However, any speaker knows that real language does not always follow the boundaries drawn by grammars. In everyday conversation—and also in written texts—they can appear as 'What have you eaten?' or 'We had rice for dinner yesterday.' These are not isolated errors or slips of the tongue: they are part of the living use of the language. Transitive use

This transitive usage is, in fact, explicitly included in the Valencian Normative Dictionary, with examples such as 'Hoy comemos arroz al horno' (Today we're having baked rice). Given this, the interesting question is not whether these constructions exist (of course they do), but what real weight they carry within the Catalan system and how they can be explained from a descriptive point of view.

When we set aside subjective impressions and look at the data, the picture is curious. Studies based on large Catalan corpora, such as the Computerized Textual Corpus of the Catalan Language (CTILC), which collects contemporary texts, and the Computerized Corpus of Old Catalan (CICA), which includes medieval and modern texts, show a very stable usage pattern over time.

To begin with, the vast majority of occurrences of food verbs are, indeed, intransitive, which confirms that this is the central and unmarked construction of Catalan. Now, alongside this dominant pattern, transitive uses of all these verbs appear systematically. They are not very frequent, but neither are they nonexistent. The curious thing is that the differences between the corpora are minimal: the transitive constructions of these verbs are part of the periphery of the grammatical system, but they have been there for centuries.

Comparison with other Romance languages ​​helps to better understand this pattern. Italian, for example, works very similarly to Catalan. Verbs like 'pranzare' ('meal') or 'cenare' ('dinner') are mainly intransitive, and when one wants to indicate what has been eaten, the general verb 'mangiare' is used: 'mangiare una pizza a cena' ('to eat a pizza for dinner'). Italian dictionaries include transitive uses of these verbs, but almost always marked as archaic, literary, or rare. In everyday language today, saying 'lo cenato la pizza' ('I ate the pizza for dinner') usually sounds strange to most speakers.

French and Occitan go even further in this direction. In both languages, verbs like 'déjeuner' ('lunch'), 'dîner' ('dinner'), or 'cena' (in Occitan) are now described as intransitive. Historically, there are transitive examples, but currently, what is ingested is expressed, as in Italian (or, more commonly, in Catalan), with the verb 'comida' (food): 'manger algo chose au diner' in French or 'comer algo a la cena' (to eat something at dinner) in Occitan.

At the other end of the Romance language spectrum, we find Spanish and Portuguese. In these languages, verbs of eating ('desayunar', 'almorzar', 'cenar'; 'almanzar', 'jantar') are clearly bivalent: they can function as intransitive or transitive verbs without any unusual feature. In Spanish, asking '¿Qué has cenado?' is normal, and in Portuguese, saying 'jantámos bacalao' doesn't raise any normative questions. Romanian presents a different pattern. Simple verbs of eating are less frequent, and constructions with supporting verbs like 'mânca' 'food' or 'a lua' 'to eat' are often preferred. Transitive uses exist, but they are clearly marginal and associated mainly with colloquial registers. Typologically

From a typological point of view, all this raises an interesting question: why do verbs that describe such an object-oriented activity—eating something—tend to be intransitive? The answer is probably semantic. Verbs like 'comida' (food) or 'cena' (dinner) don't so much describe the physical action of ingesting food as they do preparing lunch or dinner. The focus of the verb isn't the specific food, but rather participating in the meal. The food item, in this context, is secondary and often remains outside the predicate structure. However, this doesn't mean that when the verb 'comida' (food) is semantically close to 'comida' (food), it can't take a direct object. It's not a general or particularly common mechanism, but it's perfectly possible within the system and has been for centuries. Therefore, saying that 'we ate suckling pig' at Christmas doesn't redefine Catalan grammar, nor is it an inexplicable anomaly. It's simply an option that, while less common, coexists with 'we ate suckling pig for lunch' (more general) or 'we ate suckling pig' (more typical in the Balearic Islands). However, the regulations don't always encompass everything the system allows, nor do they need to. Understanding this might allow us to talk about what we eat without worrying about whether we're doing it 'correctly' or not. And that's always welcome at Christmas.