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I've observed native speakers use this construction (similarly with 好き).

Does this mean that なる can be used transitively and take a direct object in some cases? Is this related to the idea that something becomes liked or disliked as an involuntary action (and thus "嫌いにする" wouldn't fit)?

CAW
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1 Answers1

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It's not なる but 嫌い that is "taking the direct object" (?) in this sentence. AFAIK なる itself is always intransitive.

嫌い is a common na-adjective which means "dislike" in the form of X嫌いだ. See: Using 嫌い and 嫌う and 私は猫が好き and 猫は私が好き

"na-adjective + になる" is a common way to say "become ~".

  • 元気になる become healthy, recover
  • きれいになる become beautiful

So X嫌いになる means "to come to dislike X (over time)".

Moreover, X嫌いになる means almost the same thing as X嫌いになる. This phenomenon has been asked about several times on this site, so please read the followings:

naruto
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  • Thanks. I searched around and read the linked questions, one of which referenced "Xを嫌いになった", but didn't find anything conclusive. Can we consider "嫌い" in this case to be more of a nominalized form of "嫌う" than the typical na-adjective? – CAW Oct 02 '16 at 18:18
  • You mean "nominalized" in this sense? Hmm, 嫌い as in ネコ嫌【ぎら】い and 好き as in 魚好【ず】き are almost like nouns to me, but as for Xを嫌いになる or Xが嫌いです, I kind of "feel" these 嫌い are adjectives... This is definitely nonstandard, but some people confuse it with an i-adjective and even say 好きくなる/好きくない. – naruto Oct 02 '16 at 18:31
  • That's what I was getting at. I guess I'm searching for a transitive verb in the sentence so that I can understand the use of を in terms of a transitive verb and a direct object. Maybe it's a mistake to try and analyze it in this way, and I should just accept this as a special case. – CAW Oct 03 '16 at 02:00