Animacy / Humanness
Is the participant human, living, or non-living?
Significato
A feature that can influence grammar depending on whether a participant is human, animate, animal, object, abstract, or respected.
Come riconoscerlo
Notice whether people and living beings behave differently from objects in the sentence.
Esempi
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?
Panoramica per lingua
Nella tua lingua madre
Italian does not have a broad animacy marker, but humanness can affect pronouns and lexical choices.
Ho visto Maria alla stazione.
I saw Maria at the station.
Nella tua lingua di studio
In inglese i nomi non hanno una marcatura grammaticale di animatezza, ma il fatto che qualcosa sia umano, animato o inanimato influisce su pronomi, pronomi relativi e scelta delle parole.
The child said they were ready.
they = riferimento a una persona senza specificarne il genere
Chi studia può usare troppo it per le persone o avere difficoltà con who/which/that e con they singolare.
Good transfer potential
This block behaves relatively similarly, so you can transfer intuition more safely between the two languages.