I came across this article http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/scientists-discovers-light-emiting-mysterious-alien-planet-338945. The web link uses "emitting" in an attributive manner which we have all seen many times. For example "light emitting diode." The title, though uses emitting in this way "Scientists discover light emitting from mysterious alien planet." The first sentence of the article uses "emanate": "Scientists have detected light emanating from..." It's almost like the writer couldn't make up their mind which word to use or wanted to add "variety."
I have seen "emanate" used more often, and to me seems correct. I'm not sure why (which is why I'm asking) but it seems to me that grammatically, "emitting" can't be used the way the writer wants to use it. "Emit" is a transitive verb and I have seen it many times used in "X emits Y" constructions. I feel the sentence should be "Scientists discover light being emitted from mysterious alien planet." (A side question is whether the preposition "by" should be used and not "from.")
The question is, "Is the verb "emit" being used correctly? Why or why not?"
Answer
I agree with you that light cannot emit from something. I think that the difficulty is that "The planet emits light" is not a causative, comparable to "The sun melts ice". The latter can be paraphrased: "The sun causes ice to melt", and it implies that "Ice melts". If "emit" were a causative verb like "melt", "The planet emits light" could be paraphrased: *"The planet causes light to emit", but it can't be paraphrased like this, because *"Light emits" is nonsense.
The authors of the article might not be to blame, because headlines are often composed by others.
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