Animacy / Humanness
Is the participant human, living, or non-living?
Σημασία
A feature that can influence grammar depending on whether a participant is human, animate, animal, object, abstract, or respected.
Πώς να το αναγνωρίζετε
Notice whether people and living beings behave differently from objects in the sentence.
Παραδείγματα
person|dog|tree|stone|idea
a person vs a thing|who vs what
I saw Maria at the station.
Visual guide
participant: Maria / dog / stone
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animacy feature
human? animal? thing? idea?
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grammar may change:
pronoun, object marker,
honorific, plural
same role: object of 'saw' I saw Maria. human I saw a dog. animate I saw a stone. thing Some languages: higher animacy -> extra marking lower animacy -> less/no marking who? vs what?
Προβολή ανά γλώσσα
Στη μητρική σας γλώσσα
English does not have grammatical animacy marking on nouns, but humanness and animacy affect pronouns, relative pronouns, and word choice.
The child said they were ready.
they = person reference without gender specification
Στη γλώσσα εκμάθησής σας
Animacy and humanness matter strongly in the personal 'a' and in pronoun choices.
Busco a mi hermano. Busco un libro.
I am looking for my brother. I am looking for a book.
Learners often fail to mark specific human direct objects with 'a'.
Good transfer potential
This block behaves relatively similarly, so you can transfer intuition more safely between the two languages.