Animacy / Humanness
Is the participant human, living, or non-living?
含义
A feature that can influence grammar depending on whether a participant is human, animate, animal, object, abstract, or respected.
如何识别
Notice whether people and living beings behave differently from objects in the sentence.
示例
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?
语言视角
用母语深入讲解
Animacy and humanness are not grammatical gender, but they affect pronouns, classifiers such as 位, address terms, and some natural expression choices.
这位老师很有名。
zhè wèi lǎoshī hěn yǒumíng = this respectful CL teacher is famous
在所学语言中
英语名词本身通常不标记“有生命/无生命”，但人或动物等特点会影响代词、who/which/that 的选择，以及具体用词。
The child said they were ready.
they = 指人但不说明性别的代词
学习者可能用 it 指人，或不确定什么时候用 who、which、that，以及如何使用单数 they。
Good transfer potential
This block behaves relatively similarly, so you can transfer intuition more safely between the two languages.