 | This article includes a list of general references, but it lacks sufficient corresponding inline citations. (April 2009) |
| Grammatical features |
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Animacy (antonym: inanimacy) is a grammatical and semantic feature, existing in some languages, expressing how sentient or alive the referent of a noun is.[1] Widely expressed, animacy is one of the most elementary principles in languages around the globe and is a distinction acquired as early as six months of age.[2]
Concepts of animacy constantly vary beyond a simple animate and inanimate binary; many languages function off an hierarchical general animacy scale that ranks animacy as a "matter of gradience".[3] Typically (with some variation of order and of where the cutoff for animacy occurs), the scale ranks humans above animals, then plants, natural forces, concrete objects, and abstract objects, in that order. In referring to humans, this scale contains a hierarchy of persons, ranking the first- and second-person pronouns above the third person, partly a product of empathy, involving the speaker and interlocutor.[3]
- ^ Santazilia, Ekaitz (2022-11-14), Animacy and Inflectional Morphology across Languages, Brill, doi:10.1163/9789004513068, ISBN 978-90-04-51306-8, S2CID 256298064, retrieved 2024-02-07
- ^ Szewczyk, Jakub M.; Schriefers, Herbert (2010). "Is animacy special? ERP correlates of semantic violations and animacy violations in sentence processing". Brain Research. 1368: 208–221. doi:10.1016/j.brainres.2010.10.070. PMID 21029726. S2CID 33461799.
- ^ a b Yamamoto, Mutsumi (2006). Agency and impersonality: Their linguistic and cultural manifestations. Amsterdam: J. Benjamins Pub. Co. p. 36.