Animacy
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Animacy is a grammatical category, usually of nouns, which influences the form a verb takes when it is associated with that noun.
Usually, animacy has to do with how alive or how sentient a noun is. In general, personal pronouns have the highest animacy, the first-person being the highest among them. Other humans follow them, and animals, plants, natural forces such as winds, concrete things, and abstract things follow in this order; however, according to the spiritual beliefs of the people whose language possesses an animacy hierarchy, deities, spirits, or certain types of animal or plant may be ranked very highly in the hierarchy.
The distinction between he/she and it is a distinction in animacy; some languages, such as Turkish and spoken Finnish do not distinguish between s/he and it. English, on the other hand, shows a similar lack of distinction between they animate and they inanimate.
Animacy plays some roles in English, as in any other language. For example, the higher animacy a referent has, the less preferable it is to use the preposition of for possession, as follows:
- My face is correct, while *the face of me is not.
- The man's face and the face of the man are both correct, and the former is preferred.
- The clock's face and the face of the clock are both correct, and the latter is preferred.
The following examples also show the importance of animacy. Compare:
- I hit his head.
- I hit him on the head. (better)
and
- I hit the door's knob.
- *I hit the door on the knob. (incorrect)
Examples of languages in which an animacy hierarchy is important include the Mexican language Totonac and the Southern Athabaskan languages (such as Western Apache and Navajo), whose animacy hierarchy has been the subject of intense study. The Tamil language has a noun classification based on animacy.
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[edit] Apachean example
Like most Athabaskan languages, Southern Athabaskan languages show various levels of animacy in its grammar, with certain nouns taking specific verb forms according to their rank in this animacy hierarchy. For instance, Navajo nouns can be ranked by animacy on a continuum from most animate (a human) to least animate (an abstraction) (Young & Morgan 1987: 65-66):
Human > Infant/Big Animal > Medium-sized Animal > Small Animal > Natural Force > Abstraction
Generally, the most animate noun in a sentence must occur first while the noun with lesser animacy occurs second. If both nouns are equal in animacy, then either noun can occur in the first position. So, both example sentences (1) and (2) are correct. The yi- prefix on the verb indicates that the 1st noun is the subject and bi- indicates that the 2nd noun is the subject.
| (1) | Ashkii | at’ééd | yiníł’į́ |
| boy | girl | yi-look | |
| 'The boy is looking at the girl.' | |||
| (2) | At’ééd | ashkii | biníł’į́ |
| girl | boy | bi-look | |
| 'The girl is being looked at by the boy.' | |||
But example sentence (3) sounds wrong to most Navajo speakers because the less animate noun occurs before the more animate noun:
| (3) | *Tsídii | at’ééd | yishtąsh |
| bird | girl | yi-pecked | |
| *'The bird pecked the girl.' | |||
In order express this idea, the more animate noun must occur first, as in sentence (4):
| (4) | At’ééd | tsídi | bishtąsh |
| girl | bird | bi-pecked | |
| 'The girl was pecked by the bird.' | |||
[edit] Animacy hierarchy and split ergativity
Animacy can also condition the nature of the morphologies of languages which are split-ergative. In such languages, participants which are more animate are more likely to be the agent of the verb, and therefore are marked in an accusative pattern: unmarked in the agent role and marked in the patient or oblique role. Likewise, less animate participants are inherently more patient-like, and take ergative marking: unmarked when in the patient role and marked when in the agent role. The hierarchy of animacy generally, but not always, is ordered:
| 1st person | > | 2nd person | > | 3rd person | > | proper names | > | humans | > | non-humans | > | inanimates |
| animates |
The location of the split (the line which divides the inherently agentive participants from the inherently patientive participants) varies from language to language, and in many cases the two classes overlaps, with a class of nouns near the middle of the hierarchy being marked for both the agent and patient roles.
[edit] References
- Frishberg, Nancy. (1972). Navajo object markers and the great chain of being. In J. Kimball (Ed.), Syntax and semantics, (Vol. 1), (p. 259-266). New York: Seminar Press.
- Hale, Kenneth L. (1973). A note on subject-object inversion in Navajo. In B. B. Kachru, R. B. Lees, Y. Malkiel, A. Pietrangeli, & S. Saporta (Eds.), Issues in linguistics: Papers in honor of Henry and Renée Kahane, (p. 300-309). Urbana: University of Illinois Press.
- Thomas E. Payne, 1997. Describing morphosyntax: A guide for field linguists. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-58224-5
- Young, Robert W., & Morgan, William, Sr. (1987). The Navajo language: A grammar and colloquial dictionary (rev. ed.). Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press. ISBN 0-8263-1014-1
