animacy

Animacy is a semantic and grammatical category that classifies referents as animate (alive, sentient, or agentive) or inanimate. The boundary between animate and inanimate varies across languages and affects how speakers encode referents in morphology, syntax, and pronoun systems. Animacy can be a property of the noun itself, a feature of the grammar, or a combination of both, and it may interact with notions of personhood or vitality within a culture.

Grammatical effects of animacy include differential marking in nouns, verbs, adjectives, and pronouns. In languages with a robust animacy distinction, animate nouns may govern different case endings, trigger different agreement patterns, or take special object-marking. For example, several Slavic languages distinguish the accusative form of nouns and adjectives depending on whether the noun is animate or inanimate. In other languages, animacy influences pronominal reference and the distribution of demonstratives or relative clauses.

Animacy hierarchies occur in some languages, ordering referents from most animate (humans) to least, and this hierarchy can govern subject alignment, pronoun choice, or the distribution of certain grammatical markers. The effect of animacy is often cross-cutting with other factors such as definiteness and the type of referent, and it can be extended to non-biological entities when cultures attribute agency to objects or phenomena.

In English, animacy effects are relatively limited, mainly influencing pronoun selection and referential strategy (for example, he or she versus it). Some languages, such as Japanese, incorporate animacy into honorifics and referential strategies rather than relying primarily on case alone.

See also: differential object marking, pronoun systems, referential hierarchies.