Verified answer

I would not regard "turned out to be" to be either transitive or intransitive. I would call it copular. A transitive verb carries its action to an object and an intransitive verb leaves the action with the subject, but a copular verb has no action at all. You might call this type of verb "a linking verb".

It seems to me that "She turned out to be a neurosurgeon," "She became a neurosurgeon," and "She is a neurosurgeon" all share a similar relationship between "she" and "neurosurgeon". The subject has a complement, rather than the verb having an object.

Technically, I would not consider "to be" to be part of the verb. "Turned out" can be considered a phrasal verb, or the word "out" can be considered a strong modifier for the verb "turned". In either case, the infinite phrase "to be a neurosurgeon" in its entirety serves as a complement of the subject "she".

The same relationship exists between "my intention" and "to finish early" in your last sentence. Both are nouns (well, nominal phrases) and both share the same real-world referent. They are alternate names for the same thing. The copula here does nothing more than place that equivalence in the past tense.

Finally, in the sentence "You should never refer to your mother as 'Lady'," the verb is "should refer", and the word "never" is an adverb modifying that verb. "Should" is a modal auxiliary verb that indicates an obligation, and "refer" is the base verb in the simple present tense. Word order has little to do with what parts of speech each word happens to be. The grammar of all of the following is the same:

- Never should you refer to her as such.

- You never should refer to her as such.

- You should never refer to her as such.

No matter what words might separate the "should" from the "refer", those two words (and only those two words) are the verb of that sentence.

The rest of the words in that sentence can be labeled as follows:

- you -- pronoun, subject of the sentence

- to your mother -- adverbial prepositional phrase, with "to" as the preposition, "mother" as the object, and "your" as a modifier for "mother".

- as "Lady" -- another adverbial prepositional phrase, with "as" as the preposition and the quoted quoted proper noun "Lady" as the object of the preposition.

IMHO. . .

First sentence--

I don't think "turned out" can be a transitive verb in this sentence. I'm fighting two different ways to diagram it, but neither results in a transitive verb.

A direct object will answer the question "What?" or "Whom?" after the subject and verb.

She turned out what? She turned out whom?

Neither of these can be answered by "to be a neuro surgeon." The phrase does answer the question "How?" as in She turned out how? With that argument, "turned out" wouldn't have a direct object and "to be a neuro surgeon" would be an adverbial infinitive. Definition 4 for turn out in the source below says "to be found", or I would say "to be discovered." Using these phrases in place of turned out ends with the same result--an adverbial infinitive.

Another way I've been figuring but can't confirm: could "turned out to be" be the complete verb? If so, it would have a predicate nominative (a neuro surgoen) rather than a direct object because she = a neuro surgeon. Regardless, you still have an intransitive verb. I still don't see how you could work it to be transitive.

Second sentence--

You--subject

should refer to--verb (see source)

never--adverb

your mother--direct object

as "Lady"--either prep. phrase or objective complement

Could put the direct object before the subject and it would mean the same:

Your mother you should never refer to as lady.

Third sentence--

My intention was---subject and verb

My intention was what? to finish early --predicate nominative

Subject and predicate nominative could be switched and the sentence would mean the same:

To finish early was my intention.

In transitive verbs you must only include the tense example : She has been playing computer all day

The verb tense is : has been playing

Second of all if the word is not in literal meaning like 'backed up' you include both words because if you remove either word it will make no sense

But in sentence #1 the noun is after a preposition therefore the noun is an object of the preposition but 'she' is the same so that means most likely the answer to #1 is transitive (verb: turned out)

In #2 the verb is 'refer' but the noun is after a preposition therefore making it object of the preposition so the answer is : intransitive (verb: refer)

Unfortunately I don't know the function of infinitive (sorry)