Animacy / Humanness
Is the participant human, living, or non-living?
Znaczenie
A feature that can influence grammar depending on whether a participant is human, animate, animal, object, abstract, or respected.
Jak to rozpoznać
Notice whether people and living beings behave differently from objects in the sentence.
Przykłady
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?
Widok językowy
W języku ojczystym
Animacy and masculine-personal status affect case and plural agreement.
Widzę psa.
I-see dog-ANIM.
W języku nauki
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
Learners may overuse 'it' for people or struggle with who/which/that and singular they.
Good transfer potential
This block behaves relatively similarly, so you can transfer intuition more safely between the two languages.