Human, animal or thing
Are we talking about a person, an animal, or a thing?
Meaning
Whether we are talking about a person, an animal, or a thing can affect the words and forms we choose. This can help us ask about it or connect it to a description. Languages draw these distinctions differently, and some do not mark them in grammar. Grammatical gender and noun classes covers groups of nouns that do not necessarily match these categories.
How to spot it
Compare how a language asks about or refers to people, animals, and things in otherwise similar sentences.
In your native language
English usually uses who to ask about people and what to ask about things or events. People take he, she, or they, including they for one person whose sex is unknown; things usually take it, while animals may take it, he, or she. Relative pronouns, words linking a noun to a description, include who for people, which for things or animals, and that for either.
The woman who lives next door is a nurse.
Who links the description to a person.
My bike, which is quite old, still works.
Which adds information about a thing; that cannot replace it in this sentence.
Our cat is hungry. She is waiting by her bowl.
She refers to a female cat treated as an individual.
In your learning language
Spanish normally puts a before an identified person used as a direct object, such as the person you see or greet. This personal a is also common with pets and animals treated as individuals, but ordinary things do not take it, and verbs such as tener usually omit it. Question words also distinguish people with quién and things with qué.
Vi a Marta en la estación.
I saw Marta at the station.
A marks Marta as the identified person seen, not as a recipient.
Vi un autobús en la estación.
I saw a bus at the station.
An ordinary thing used as the object does not take personal a.
Estoy buscando a mi gato.
I'm looking for my cat.
Personal a is common when referring to one's own pet.
Learners whose language marks people and things alike as objects may omit a before an identified person or add it before ordinary things. Learners whose language uses a similar marker only for recipients may wrongly interpret personal a as meaning to someone.