Why are もらう、習う、教わる、借りる and 聞くthe only transitive verbs that behave like they are in passive conjugation? Is there a name for this category of verb?


もらう、習う、教わる、借りる and 聞く (in its "to hear from" meaning) and their honorifics I'm
pretty sure are the only verbs where に and から are somewhat interchangeable in
their active form, in that に marks the agent / actor and が marks the
recipient.

Other transitive verbs of reception like 受ける and 預かる work just like other
transitive verbs of giving, receiving and motion, with に functioning as a
location marker, as one would expect:

（私たちは（が））雨水を桶に受ける

In fact, these five verbs act with が and に exactly as if they are in passive
conjugation. [edit: removed incorrect part, see comments if you're curious]

For example, 教わる behaves exactly like 教えられる grammatically and can be swapped
into any sentence without changing the particles, except 教えられる can carry an
attitude (the so called "suffering passive") which can make it semantically
(but not grammatically) inappropriate.

However, the five verbs are indeed transitive, NOT intransitive, and take を
with regularity.

There are intransitive verbs of motion that occasionally take を like 行く , and
分かる / できる take を when grammatically necessary but these cases seem to have no
relation to these five verbs, which appear to be a completely different
phenomenon.

Grammarians and linguists focus on categorizing and describing the most
trivial of oddities so it's come as a surprise to me that no one seems to
comment on this in any of the papers I've read.

This lack of category has bothered me for months, does anyone have any
insights?

