David and Bui wrote:ปวด __N ผมปวดหลังมาก หมอช่วยหน่อย
(This one surprises me. I have difficulty conceptualizing ปวด as a transitive verb with หลัง as its object. Perhaps I misunderstand the meaning of ปวด. I had conceived of ปวด as a stative verb and หลัง is the location where the state occurs. I can understand ปวด as a transitive verb in the phrase "ทำให้ปวด" (to cause to be hurt) as in "He hurt his son when he struck him with his belt." On the other hand, perhaps Amara's sentence means "I did something to cause me to have an incredibly painful backache; the doctor was able to help me a bit.)
Semantically, it's not very different to feeling an earthquake. What does a human do to an earthquake? However, there might be a useful way of looking at it. It is not the back that experiences pain; it is the brain, and painkillers generally work on the central nervous system. Therefore, the person subject gives articulation to the problem experienced by the body part.
However, I must confess that I am surprised that both
หลังถูกผมปวดมาก and
หลังถูกปวดมาก are grammatical. Perhaps I misunderstand the test from p97 of her book, which you quoted in this thread on Sunday 2 November. The second sentence does look plausible, and maybe that is what swings it. Judging by the examples for
ปวด, one can also make what I regard as a more natural
formal 'passive',
หลังปวดมาก. (Some languages prohibit the original subject from appearing in the passive construction.)
In Enfield's taxonomy for
Lao, the sample construction is either (or both!) an external-possessor construction or am experiencer-subject construction. His external-possessor construction also allows what I consider the natural passive. He does use the symbol 'O' (clearly for 'object') for the possession or cause. Like me, he's not particularly enamoured of the
ถูก-passive.
On formal grounds, it seems that
ปวด is indeed transitive, and so Dr Amara is not actually wrong to label it as 'transitive', much as it seems weird to us. Perhaps it's no odder than the English combination 'to sit on' being effectively a transitive verb in English. This does seem to answer the original question:
In Thai, เห่อ can be a transitive verb, with the object being the thing causing the subject to have the experience.The nearest English example I can think of is 'to crave', which doesn't include the result of satisfying one's craving.
